Transmuting Grief into Positive Change: Lessons from the Death of My Father

On June 21, 2008, at just 59 years old, my father died of lung cancer. Today would have been his 65th birthday. “Special” days don’t particularly make me any sadder about his death compared to any other day. Not one has gone by that I don’t think about him; and some days, the pain is as fresh and raw as if it just happened six days ago, and not almost six years. Sometimes I feel this wave of shock, like I really can’t believe it happened. This idea that you will never see this person again is really hard to process on an emotional level, regardless of how much time has passed it seems.

The strangest thing about this whole experience, is that my life now, (with the exception of him not being here) is the best it has ever been. I am pretty much living it how I have always wanted to, and his death was the catalyst to all this change. While I had been on my ”path,” well before his passing, losing him certainly accelerated my efforts to do, be and have what I truly wanted. Sometimes I wonder how things would have transpired had I never been touched by this  life-altering experience.

Grief can be one of the most powerful agents of change; it offers us an opportunity to experience tremendous growth. These hard times can truly help us carve out a path to happiness. The key is we must be active participants in directing this positive change. It will not happen passively. If we do nothing, grief can easily destroy us completely.

Grief Pushed Me to a Place I Would Not Go Willingly

To really change significantly for the better, and to make the uncomfortable decisions required of living life as we truly wish to live it, we often have to get down deep into the muck that has built up over our lives–all the guilt, shame, fear, sadness, anger, betrayal and self-loathing.

While we can decide to confront all of these demons at any time, for most of us–myself included–  we often need to be forced to enter this scary territory. There is a lot of pain residing here and going willingly to face it is not an easy choice to make.  Grief is a powerful emotion, and it will surely take us more quickly than anything else we may experience.

The trick is whether we decide to stay a bit and truly face it, or continue to deny this part of ourselves, and let it fester. I decided to stay. It was unpleasant to say the least, but I managed to work through a lot of my ”stuff,” and while I am surely not past all of it, I did enough work to allow me to move farther along than I ever had previously. I felt a lightness that I never had before. Some of that emotional ”pus” had been permanently cleared.

Feeling That Badly Really Motivated Me to Find a Way to Be Happy

All the emotions involved in dealing with the death of those close to us is really hard to articulate in words–nothing we say can truly do justice to the experience. Feeling as badly as I did, I was really motivated to do all I could to make myself feel better. I knew I would always carry this loss with me, and my goal was not to totally rid myself of any feelings of sadness. Rather, I made it my goal to clarify my desires, and build the life I truly wanted to live. We all know our time is limited on this Earth, but this truth tends to only really hit when death touches us personally.

For the first time in my life, I truly decided to make happiness a priority. I realized it was something that could be crafted through deliberate choices and working on my perspective and mindset. While I hope I live a long healthy life, who knows what is in store for me. I decided to follow my dreams now, because later may not come.  I stopped worrying about what other people thought of me, or my choices. It’s my life and as long as I was comfortable with my decisions, that was all that mattered.

I Began to Seriously Contemplate What I Truly Wanted and Who I Was

It is really easy to get swept up in the day-to-day responsibilities of life; the dreams we once had easily fall by the wayside as we bow to pressures from family or society at large.  We start pursuing what we ”should” want, rather than what we may actually want.We get deeper and deeper into a ”comfortable” life ,and the more time that passes, the harder it becomes to break away.We start living on auto-pilot. Then one day, you wonder how you got so off track; you feel like you have become someone you don’t even recognize.

Grief pulled me out of my routine and mental rut; and getting pulled out, whether through a profound emotional experience, or simply taking a trip and getting away from your normal routine, can really get the wheels turning. You get off auto-pilot and start thinking more deliberately about what you truly want your life to be like, and the type of person you want to be.

For the first time in my life, I was truly examining my options for making these changes, not just thinking about them in some abstract way, all the while, staying exactly the way I was. There was less apprehension, as the more I got clear on what I truly wanted, the more confident I became in making the decisions that would bring from from where I was now to where I wanted to be.

Many Challenges I Now Face Seem Like Nothing in Comparison

The period of my father’s illness, and dealing with his death, was without  question, the most difficult thing I have ever had to go through. So many things that would have seemed so difficult in the past now seem like nothing. And the more smoothly we can handle the myriad challenges in our life, the better off  we will be.

The absence of problems, while it sure would be nice, is not a necessary ingredient for happiness. This experience changed the whole filter through which I view my life, and while I don’t always succeed, I have gotten much better at not getting as worked up about certain things as I might have before this experience.

I have learned to be much more grateful for all the good I have in my life. I realize many of the issues that  crop up are nothing compared to what some other people go through. Grief gave me a bit of a thicker skin that has served me well over these last few years.

No matter what challenging situation we may be facing, whether it is mourning the loss of a loved one, a divorce, money problems, or the million other sucky things life can throw at us, there is always an opportunity in there. Adversity in any form, can be a catalyst for good, and the more adverse the situation, the more opportunity for growth.

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