Losing Her Constant

Nancy’s father, Dave, after a day of hunting

This is Nancy’s story, as told by Jeanette. Our “Opening Our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences with grief and loss. By sharing these experiences publicly, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief, and ultimately, aid them in their healing process. In this post, we tell the story of a woman who has lost her father .

When Nancy was a girl, she and her father often went fishing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They wandered through the woods together — touched the petals of the plants and flowers they discovered there, chased live fish and tadpoles in the springs, picked up snakes and bugs with their bare hands.

Nancy and her father went camping every other year during the last decade of his life. On their last trip to Copper Harbor, he seemed unusually tired, but his mind was as sharp as ever. He reflected, at length, on the beauty of the waterfalls surrounding them; talked about what it was like to grow up in the Upper Peninsula.

The weekend that her father passed away, Nancy was supposed to visit her parents for Easter. She returned to her home after work and hit the play button on her answering machine to find that her mother had left her a message: “Your father is dead. Give me a call.”

Nancy’s breath caught in her throat. How could this be real? Yes, her father had suffered from heart problems for years, but there never seemed to be an imminent sense of peril. How could he have died? Just like that?

At his funeral, a staggering number of people approached Nancy to tell her what a good man her father was — how helpful, and how loving. Nancy already knew this to be true. Throughout her life, her dad had given her sound, practical advice. He always had an innate sense of how to fix things (from household plumbing, mechanical, and electrical issues to Nancy’s broken heart when her first high school boyfriend broke up with her in the 11th grade), and had taught her everything she knew in the way of self-reliance. Because of him, she knew how to fix a toilet, change a tire, catch a trout.

Her father was her rock-solid constant in a world of flux and uncertainty — an ever-available resource she could (and often did) consult whenever the need or desire struck. And suddenly, that resource was gone.

Her sense of stability was, for the first time, truly rocked.

Nancy and her father on a fishing trip

Who could she call when she needed guidance on financial investments or potential job switches? Who would know exactly what to say to reassure her when she felt nervous or uncertain? Suddenly, Nancy realized how much she needed her father — how much she depended on him to remind her that she was, in fact, independent.

The self-sufficient woman she’d believed herself to be suddenly felt like a child — a child who wanted her father.

In the months that followed his death, Nancy’s mind returned over and over to that last camping trip: Her father’s uncharacteristic physical fatigue… the fresh, self-caught trout and buffalo meat they’d cooked over an open flame… the deep belly laugh they’d shared when they tried to yank the cork out of a wine bottle (in the frenzy of her efforts, Nancy ended up flat on her bottom)… the way he’d begun to reflect on his life and even speak about his own death. “I’m ready to go when I go,” he’d told her. “I want you to remember that I had a good life.”

He’d said that he was proud of his children, that he was happy and comfortable. In fact, he said everything a daughter could hope for her parent to say — everything that “should,” theoretically, bring a one a sense of comfort and resolution following her father’s death. But she couldn’t deny the reality of her feelings: Although this may have soothed the ache of Nancy’s loss, it didn’t come close to erasing it.

All her life, Nancy understood her sense of safety in the world through her father.

Now her father was a memory, and nothing in world could change that.