Life with Wilder, Loss of a Father

This year has been big: it’s held life and death.

There was the birth of my sweet boy Wilder and the sudden loss of my sweet father, my daddio, my papa.

Life has never felt more real and surreal.

Birth stretched me me open in every sense of the word. Heart, body and soul. I became an animal and my body entered another Universe. It ushered a new life who now occupies every moment of my day and crevice of my thoughts.

Being a mom makes me laugh and cry and reimagine myself daily. It started in pregnancy - 9 months of adjusting to him arriving. Then he was here and my whole life changed in ways I could never imagine and in ways that feel so natural. He is an extension of me while being entirely his own. I love him.

Death came more suddenly. My dad fell traveling in Morocco. My mom and brothers flew to his bedside. I had to wait until they were in France and until Wilder had his passport. It was a wild ride of hope and despair and updates. Things would seem to be improving and then get much much worse.

Eventually my whole family gathered in a hospital room in France and and yelled for my dad to breathe and cough. We were told if that if he could he stood a chance to live when they took the respirator out. If he didn’t, they would not resuscitate. He cleared his throat loudly, the way he would at home on a normal day, and we screamed and rejoiced.

Somewhere in between an ICU doctor told me we shouldn’t have even let him live this long - his future looked bleak. A young doctor said “You must realize, this is very, very bad.” We hung to hope still. I hunted down scans. We all researched various paths to recovery. I found one doctor with kind eyes who said “Anything is possible.” We massaged his body. I cleaned out his nostrils. We brought Wilder into the room. He squeezed my hand and stroked my hair and I could tell he knew I was there.

And then one day he stopped squeezing my hand back as tightly. The next morning there was a message on my mom’s phone from the doctor with the kind eyes. That night, after we left, he left us for good.

We visited his body the next day. I kept waiting for him to walk in. The body was just a body. My dad was full of life. Maybe at home tapping his foot to jazz music or making a curry. This was not him. It couldn’t be.

Wilder and I flew home soon after alone.

It all still feels surreal. I cry when Wilder sleeps. When he’s awake I want to share his joy.

It’s all so human that all I can do is love bigger, laugh louder, and occasionally lose myself in tears.

I feel more connected in moments and lonely in others.

My dad used to read every one of my blogs. I have trouble with words these days - so maybe it’s time to write.

Hi, I’m here. It’s been a big year.