At my mom’s funeral, I remember my dad and I looking up and suppressing laughter. We had both spotted a friend’s eight-year-old son trying to sneak back in after he left the service for a while to use the bathroom. But the image of him clattering through the crowded room as he ran around his mom contrasts the seriousness of the ceremony in the most comical way. We tried to set up so as not to further disrupt the service. But no one seemed to be bothered by our hysteria. Only when you are closer to the person who died can you escape laughing at a funeral. This ability to fight with each other sums up my relationship with my dad for the first 17 years of my life. He was the fun dad I played sports with, who encouraged my competitiveness to go out when I was playing board games, then joined forces with my older sister to make fun of me when I lost. I grew up in a nuclear family: two parents, with my sister and I being the symmetrical four. In meditation, I never spent much time alone with my dad until that momentum dissipated. My mom and I were close, and my sister and I spent the weekends going out in the countryside or baking together. My dad was also there often, reading a newspaper and listening to the radio at the same time, too caught up in his own world of football to join our conversation. His presence was constant, but he and I never got the chance to have deeper conversations like he and my mom. But when I was 17, my mom was finally diagnosed after years of cancer treatment. When she died six weeks later, I became almost an adult daughter of an unmarried dad. My sister was still with us, but she was planning to leave in a few months. It was my dad and I who forged an implicit agreement to join forces against the world. In the first few weeks after my mom died, we spent countless hours together thinking about how to manage our home without my mom. He was the central figure around whom we all roamed, and without her, we were carried away. None of us were the parent or the child (Image: Kezia Rice) Tea would not be on the table unless someone planned what to cook and bought ingredients. The clothes would not be clean and dry and ironed unless the clothes had already been washed the night before. It was not that my dad had just raised his finger when my mom was alive – on the contrary, he contributed a lot to household and administrative tasks. But my mom was the one who coordinated the intricacies of our daily lives, and now we had to navigate to run our household without her, while at the same time dealing with our grief. During this process, my dad needed me as much as I needed him, and that was the glue that united us after my mom’s death. But just because two people mourn the same person does not mean that they will react in the same way. I wanted to control my emotions. he wanted to talk about my mom with anyone who listened to him. Sometimes I got angry with him without specifying why, only I knew that the simple reference to the words “cancer” and “dead” in the same sentence triggered me. But he was still the closest person who could understand emotions that I did not understand. When I started crying out of nowhere after weeks of feeling good, he just hugged me without asking for an explanation. As the weeks turned into months and years later, we became more and more inseparable. We would go out in the evenings together, meet for vacations in new countries, and have countless domestic conversations that ended in tumultuous laughter whenever I came to visit him at home. But when people call me “daddy’s girl” because I mention I’m close to my dad, I’re not echoing the phrase. I do not feel like his “little princess” – in fact, I feel as responsible for him as he does for me. I often call him for a quick chat that lasts until the evening, as we discuss the latest updates on the lives of everyone we know. We also talk about our love affairs openly and easily ask each other for advice – something I could never have imagined doing when I was a teenager. Because our culture mainly depicts mothers passing on words of wisdom to their daughters, I always thought I would do the same when my problems shifted from schoolyard stress to dating dramas. But without going to my mom, it was natural to share the weight of every crack I experienced with the person I was closest to. When I graduated from university, I moved in with my dad for six months, which came to a year when the lockdown fell. The relationship for which I am very grateful was born of sadness, and with it comes a twisted guilt We spent these first few disorienting weeks together, reading the news and underestimating the government. We played the same board games over and over again and watched wildly who won, then watched TV together and shuddered at the embarrassment of watching the Normal People have sex with your family. When I finally moved to a different country, I took with me a heavy guilt that I had left him to live alone – and after the travel restrictions eased, I started trying to meet him every few months to make up for it. Recently, I got my second tattoo – a little forgetful on my ankle – as a reminder of those locking weeks we spent sitting in our garden, submerged in a sea of flooded blue flowers that were so out of control that it almost hid us from the world. I showed it to my dad during a family call at Zoom and saw his parental side as he called me outraged by my full name and asked me what the hell I was thinking by permanently falsifying my body. “But Dad, why are you shocked?” I asked him. “I already have a tattoo. You have seen it before! “ My sister and I condemned our dad’s ability to forget the basics of our lives before sternly reminding him that I was 24 and could make my own decisions. The momentum had been reaffirmed. Neither of us was the parent or the child – we were just two equals trying to get along in life.
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Almost seven years after my mom’s death, I can not imagine my family structure being different. The relationship for which I am very grateful was born of sadness, and with it comes a distorted guilt. Of course I wish my mom was still here, but the bond I have with my dad? I do not know if I could have imagined my life without it. Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact by sending an email to [email protected] Share your views in the comments below. MORE: After I lost my dad, This Is Us taught me that there is no timetable for grief MORE: It cost 13 13,000 to help my sick husband die on his own terms at Dignitas MORE: My mom survived the civil war, hunger and sadness – and she is my personal fashion icon
