My dad died fourteen years ago today.

He was really sick, and we knew it was coming. But I think, up until the end, we were holding out hope that he’d somehow pull through. That’s what you do, right? You cling to the hope, no matter how small, that your loved one will recover.

And that hope, even as it keeps you afloat in the stress of hospital visits and physicians explaining the odds and frustrating phone calls to insurance companies, feels like such a letdown when it runs out. It feels like a betrayal. That hope that carried you through suddenly dumps you on your ass. Hands you off to grief. Feeds the denial most of us feel right after our loved ones die.

“Hope is the thing with feathers”, wrote Emily Dickinson. And things with feathers can fly away. They can leave you on the ground, kicking and screaming that it isn’t fair. And even 14 years later, it’s the hope that I lost the morning my father died that still gut punches me. Because hope leaves when you need it most, but it also comes back. It came back with Mina until it was crushed underfoot by an oncologist who was kind enough to tell me the crushing truth- that there was nothing he could do for my daughter. It came back when my mother-in-law had surgery that was supposed to fix her, not kill her. And it will be back again to hold my hand through trauma, and to whisper its goodbyes when I lose someone else.

I don’t know where my dad is. My hope is that, wherever he finds himself, it’s a happy place, free of pain and full of art supplies. I hope that he’s had a chance to meet Mina, and that they’re somewhere together. If you’d like to read my dad’s obituary, you can do that here: John W. Fletcher Obituary – Death Notice and Service Information