Writing through grief
On how I wrote letters to my dead father to deal with death, regrets and grief.
"You should come back," my cousin wrote after meeting the doctor at the hospital. My dad, who had congenital heart disease, was now lying in the Cardiac Intensive Unit Care (CICU).
I packed my luggage and took my seven-month-old baby with me on the flight the following day, leaving my 3.5-year-old son behind with his dad. It would be the second time I'd be away from him; the first was for four days after giving birth to his little sister and staying back because of her jaundice.
On the plane, I braced myself for the worst. We were told after my dad’s last operation almost ten years ago that it would be his last, as it is rare for anyone to undergo more than three open-heart surgeries, especially not at his age.
How do we say goodbye?
One rarely gets the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones before they die. It's a blessing. My dad had this opportunity lying in the CICU, but it didn't occur to him to do so. It's just not something that's done in our Chinese culture. He was raised to "be a man" and not to talk about emotions and feelings, which are considered weak.
After a few days of taking turns with the allowed one-hour daily visit to see our dad, my husband was shocked to learn that I hadn't yet said my goodbye. Why did I fly all the way here? For one, of course, I'm here to do my best to help him and save him from certain death. Everyone in my family didn't want to face the reality. They wanted Daddy to live. I did, too. Yet I also see the reality of things; the numbers on the papers don't lie, and the sheer amount of adrenaline they're pumping into him constantly to keep him alive is clear enough.
"If you want to say your goodbye, you better do it now," my husband said.
I rehearsed the whole night what I wanted to tell my dad before he left this world. When the time slot for the visit came, I held his arm and said, "Thank you, Daddy."
"Thank you for what?" he asked, looking confused.
"Thank you for being my daddy." Then he looked down and kept quiet.
"You know, my best memory of us was the time we traveled together in Laos..." Then, I broke down and cried uncontrollably.
My dad got uncomfortable. We were never the kind of family that shared deep feelings. We've explored string theory and alien life but never shared personal thoughts or feelings. So I gathered myself together and stopped crying, but I couldn't go on anymore, lest the floodgates opened again.
Did I fail to say goodbye despite the golden opportunity to do so?
In reflection, I did say goodbye in my own way—the Chinese way. I flew back with a baby in my arms the very next day and took over all the logistics once I was there. The look of relief he gave me when he first saw me validated my return. I asked him hard questions like what kind of end-of-life arrangements he prefers. I checked if he had any wishes or things left to be done.
I fulfilled his wish to be home for his final breath, even though I had to scale mountains to do so. His family finally surrounded him before he took his last breath, though he was already in a state of semi-consciousness due to blood toxicity from liver failure.
Death and regrets
There is one wish I did not manage to fulfill for him. He asked me almost daily to get him ice cream, but he was not allowed any solid food in his state. The nurses emphasized that this would endanger him. So we listened. Towards the end, when his liver started failing and all hopes started dissipating, the nurses relented in their food restrictions, but I did not manage to get him any ice cream. I recall vividly his disappointment as I offered him a yogurt, hastily bought at the hospital convenience store (seriously, why don't they sell ice cream?), as a substitute.
I was too overwhelmed then, arranging palliative care to discharge him from the hospital, to think about ice cream. Every moment felt like a race against time. Regret weighed heavy in my heart as I rode with him home in the ambulance in his semi-conscious state. Am I too late?
When we were home, I brought my baby—his youngest granddaughter whom he had never met—to him. I said, “Daddy, this is Yara.” He raised his feeble hand and grabbed hold of her foot. With that gesture, he unknowingly also soothed my heart. He can still hear us, and he is still inside there! With that, I felt the burden lifted.
After his death, I went to my apartment studio, which he lived in when he was in KL, to clean up his belongings. When I opened the freezer, my heart broke at the sight of two green tea ice creams.
How do we grieve?
Returning to Germany after the funeral provided a respite from where it all happened. I permitted myself to grieve later when I was ready, especially with a baby to care for, who was recovering from all the changes, flying, and jet lag while possibly sensing the turmoil in her mother.
The comforting part was that my loved ones back in Germany didn't worry too much about me. They didn't question whether I had grieved enough, if I was okay, or if I was burying everything inside (which, judging from my history, I might have been). It was reassuring to have people close to me trust that I would handle things in my own time.
A good friend introduced me to the podcast “All There Is” by Anderson, which explores grief. Listening to this universal experience that people rarely talked about was therapeutic. Anderson started facing his grief by going through the many things his late mother had left behind. I, on the other hand, was thankful that my dad was a practical man who left nothing much behind for us to deal with. He is not one for nostalgia, so we won’t find things he kept only for sentimental value.
However, I did bring back a little golf bear that I found in my studio, clutching it like the last physical link to my dad. This bear, undoubtedly a souvenir gift from a friend or relative in Australia, perfectly encapsulates my dad, the golf lover.
After a year of my dad’s passing, a close friend that I visited in the UK, who not too long ago lost her mother, asked me, “Have you accepted your father’s death?” I paused and replied, “The fact that it still feels very weird when I think that my dad is no longer in this world proves that I have not.”
Months later, I contracted COVID for the second time, followed by another round of infection two weeks later. Overall, I was in a compromised state of sickness for more than two months. I spent most of last Christmas holidays sleeping, taking advantage of the extra help as we spent the festive season with my in-laws.
At that time, I learned about the “Writing protocol by Pennebaker1” from Huberman. It introduced a simple method for healing through writing. Huberman also highlighted the fact that traumas not only leave us mentally scarred but also compromise our immune system. Our body and mind are intertwined in more ways than we can imagine. In my weakened, sick state, I was convinced. I needed to finally close the chapter on grief and start my path toward healing.
I wrote letters to my dead father in four sessions across two weeks, detailing the entire process and anything related to the events leading up to and including his death and after. I cried buckets after the first writing session. Luckily for me, my husband was working from home that day, so I went to him and sobbed into his shoulders. We should not underestimate the power of human touch and love despite knowing we can heal ourselves by writing alone. With each session, I cried less, and by the last letter to my dad, I found closure within myself.
“There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” ― David M. Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
Moving on
I see now that we never really say goodbye. The departed will live on in us, in our memory, until we, too, pass on. My dad, however, did say his goodbye in his own way. He entrusted me with a gold ring from his father, my Ah Gong (grandpa), to give to my husband.
By writing letters to my dad, I do not know if I've fully healed or grieved, but I did come to a resolution on how to honor him on his death anniversary every year - by savoring a scoop of green tea ice cream.
Please share your thoughts:
Have you experienced cultural norms or family dynamics influencing how you communicate during difficult times such as this?
How do you personally cope with grief? Do you have any rituals to honor the memory of loved ones?
More from my personal essays:
Write down your deepest emotions and thoughts as they relate to the most upsetting experience in your life. Let go and explore your feelings and thoughts about it. You might tie this to your childhood, relationship with parents or siblings, people you may have loved or loved now, schooling, and childhood and how this experience relates to who you have become, who you were in the past, and who you would like to become.
Write for 15 to 30 minutes.
Write in four sessions. Consecutive days or once a week within four weeks.
Hi Istiaq, thank you so much for your kind words! Writing is definitely a good one. Tears will well up and I'll feel my heart tightening though when looking at pictures, maybe I just need more time. Celebrating them by remembering what they taught you is a really nice idea, it'll be nice to pass it on too if possible!
I speak to him and trusts that he listens. What a soothing essay you have written even when talking about a stark death. In india we do cry a lot in first few days and then carry on. Which I found difficult to deal with it. So I cry,write and do small things for my heart