He Was Losing Me Too

I remember saying it to my dad when he was dying, “You’re not the one losing you. I’m the one losing you.”

At 23, I believed that with my whole heart. I couldn’t imagine living in a world without my father.

He was only 52.
I was only 24. (My birthday was literally the day before he died).
My mother was only 51.
My older brother was only 26.
My little brother was only 17.
We were all far too young for any of this.

I was consumed by anticipatory grief—by anger, by panic, by the unbearable reality that my dad was going to die. So I cried and told him that I was the one losing him.

He didn’t correct me. He didn’t say, “I’m losing you, too.”

He didn’t tell me about all the things he would miss: visiting me in China, the weddings, the grandchildren, the graduations, the ordinary Tuesday phone calls when he would leave me voice mails with a bad Italian accent, the versions of us he would never get to know.

He didn’t tell me about the dreams he had that would never happen, the places he wanted to go, the life he thought he still had time to live.

He didn’t talk about the grief of not being able to grow old with the love of his life, my mother.

He, too, was losing so much.

He simply let me fall apart and would ask me why I was crying.

At the time, I understood intellectually that he was losing many things too. Of course, I knew he was losing his future. His chance to go to China, volunteer in a hospital in Israel, and watch his children grow up. I didn’t really understand how the man who took care of the health of most of the county we lived in was now a prisoner in his own body, unable to even take care of himself. I did not truly understand what it meant to be forced to leave your children in an untimely way.

I did not come close to understanding until I became a mother. The truth is, I will never understand, and I hope I don’t ever have to.

When I went into early labor with my oldest daughter, something went wrong.

Suddenly, six nurses rushed into the room. My blood pressure was through the roof. My oxygen was dropping. My baby’s oxygen was dropping. The room became very quiet in that terrifying way that didn’t seem possible in a small delivery room with nine grown adults.

There was a team working on me and another team standing by for my baby.

And all I could think was:

What if I never get to meet her?
What if I never get to hold her in my arms?
What if I spent eight months talking to this little person, falling in love with her, dreaming about her... and never got to know her outside my body?

Then another fear hit me.

What if she has to grow up without me?

I know what it’s like to lose a parent at a young age.
I know the ache.
I know the longing.
I know the way grief quietly follows you into birthdays and graduations and ordinary Tuesdays.

The thought of my daughter carrying that kind of loss broke me.

Thankfully, the epidural did its job in more ways than one. The pain eased. My body settled. The crisis passed (for a little while at least).

But the fear never completely left me.

Years later, I keep coming back to my dad.

I think about how brave he was.
I think about how he carried his own heartbreak while making room for mine.
I think about the fact that he never corrected me when I said, “I’m the one losing you.”

Because now I know something I couldn’t possibly have understood then.

He was losing me, too.
He was losing the chance to watch me become the woman I am today.
He was losing the chance to meet my daughters, his grandbabies.
He was losing future conversations, future holidays, future travel.
He was losing his career, his medical practice, and the dream of being able to practice medicine in Israel.
He was losing all the ordinary moments that, together, become a lifetime with your wife and children.

There are some things I can only start to understand because I became a mother.

I understand now that my father wasn’t just dying.

He was leaving.
He was leaving behind children he desperately wanted to watch grow up.
He was grieving futures he would never get to witness.

And still, he let me be the one who was heartbroken.

Motherhood has given me many things—joy I never knew existed, fears I never imagined possible, and new layers of grief I didn’t know were waiting for me.

Grief truly is non-linear.

I always feared that I wouldn’t get to make new memories with him, which is true. But I’m grateful to get to know him deeper and in new ways as a mom and an adult.

And another one of motherhood’s greatest gifts has been this:

It keeps introducing me to my father in entirely new ways.

I’d Love to Hear From You

If someone you loved is gone, have you ever realized — maybe years later — the different ways that they were losing you, too? If it feels too personal to reply here, send me a message or email, and we can share our heart stories there.

Related Reading

• Forgiving My Younger Self

• Confessions of a New Mom: The Grief and Joy of Birth

A Gentle Resource

I remember sitting in the NICU, less than an hour into motherhood, already convinced I was failing her. I remember years earlier, sitting with my dad, so consumed by my own grief I couldn’t see he was grieving too. Both times, I had nowhere to put any of it.

That’s part of why, years later, I created You’re Not Failing, You’re Feeling — for the moments when you need somewhere to put it, too.