Posting here is so weird for me because it seems like something I should be able to talk about to a therapist, process in private, and just get over. But it’s been 5 years since my dad passed from cancer and the grief and pain seem to be getting worse. I was in medical school when he was diagnosed and lived half way across the country from home. I remember flying home for vacations and he would be waiting at the top of the stairs for me when I walked through the door after my mom picked me up from the airport. I didn’t get to see him enough and he changed and was so different while he was ill. For the first few years after he passed, when I would remember him, I remembered the version I got to know over the year and a half he was sick. Now I get these massive waves of just absolute shock and intense grief that I can’t call and talk to him (the him that I knew for 27 years) about the insanity of my job. He passed away in 2020 during covid shutdowns while I was still in med school. I flew home for the funeral but that was it. I went back to school and my family grieved all together and I feel like I just ignored it. I still cried sometimes and felt things when it got too big but for the most part my day to day, mechanically never changed. I tried not to talk about it too much because it felt attention seeking and dramatic. When I did grieve it was big outbursts. I got through things and passed licensing exams, matched into a surgical specialty and am now at an awesome program I’m nearing the end of a 5 year residency. Over the past year I’ve become just completely overwhelmed and isolated in the grief I’m experiencing. I want to talk to my dad so SO bad. When insane things happen at work or when there’s politics happening that I don’t know how to handle, or I need advice on how to network or what to say for interviews, or when I just need to hear his voice and know he’s got my back and my rock is there. With residency it’s insane hours, I work a lot of weekends, I’m half way across the country from home, flights are expensive, and when I get a surprise day or days off it’s too little notice to book a flight home. My family is strapped for money too and can’t come to me. I miss holidays, I can’t get home on short notice, my family spends every weekend in the summer at our summer place, all my family is within a few miles of each other. I feel like I’m out on this island by myself and that they hurt and grieved together and I’m out here alone trying to keep my head above water. I missed an event that I use to honor him this year. My friends here didn’t understand what it meant to me to go be with my family for this. It’s the first time I’ve missed it since he passed. I am still broken hearted. It’s silly. I have so many other things I need to worry about and focus on. And I just struggle so much trying to move on from all this. I just had to put it somewhere because it feels really heavy right now.
