One year. Three hundred sixty-five days since I physically felt my heart shatter when I heard my mom say the words, “Your dad had a heart attack and passed away in his sleep.” Honestly, I never expected to listen to those words.

When someone tells you that a loved one has passed away, the very first thing that happens is disbelief. You refuse to believe what you just heard. Your brain hears the words, but it does not process them. A feeling of shock and disbelief sweep across your whole body, and the feeling in the moments that follow can be best described as hollow.

How can you accept that someone that you love is no longer here? Especially when you just saw that person two days prior. People try to console you with words of condolence and encouragement, but mentally and physically, you are numb. A tornado could have come and swept me off of the ground I was standing on, and I wouldn’t have felt a thing. That is how numb and lost I was. Physically, I was on Earth; internally, I was in a black hole of numbness and disbelief.

The initial numbness doesn’t wear off within a few days, like most of us would like or want to believe would happen. Sometimes it doesn’t even hit at first. It comes in waves. And instead of allowing ourselves time to process the information and emotions that come along with the passing of a loved one, we immediately occupy ourselves. There are services to be arranged, flowers to be bought, and making the decision on how the family shall say their final farewell. What follows the time of death is days of constant planning and preparing that keeps your mind occupied and unavailable to focus on your feelings. We don’t allow ourselves the time to process what has just happened, so leading up to the funeral or service, bottle your grief up and place it on a shelf to the side so you can take care of things. It only subdues the grief and pain temporarily. Once the funeral process is over, you truly begin to feel the loss.

The dust settles, and family and friends return to their routines and daily lives, and you sit and wonder how you could live the same life that you did before you lost your love one. You are there, alone, left with the task of gathering the broken pieces of your heart and piecing them back together slowly. No one can prepare you for the mental spiral that is to come — the questioning of what you could have done differently. I asked myself how I could have been a better daughter. I had a good relationship with my dad, and I never thought that I would question if I was present enough in his life or if I spent enough time with him. After he died, I began to replay every single missed opportunity that I could have spent with him and even blamed myself for having a social life and not dedicating more time to my family. I felt guilty for creating a life for myself that didn’t include seeing or talking to him daily.

If being filled with these thoughts while I was awake wasn’t enough, my dreams were also about my dad. One dream in particular that I had almost every night after he passed was him wearing a black tuxedo, and we were standing outside of a concrete building with a red door. He flicked his cigarette out and took a look at me with his bright blue eyes and said, “Let’s do this.” Then he wrapped his arm around my shoulder, kissed me on the forehead, and we started walking towards the door. I had hoped that my dreams would be of something else, something that wouldn’t reflect my sadness, but there was no escaping it, not even in my dreams. I was trapped within my mind, and there was no way out.

Honestly, I never thought that losing my dad would be so painful or throw me into a spiral of intense grief and depression. I had dealt with death and grief previously. When I was 17 years old, my biological father passed away from cancer the morning after my high school graduation. With his passing, I was catapulted into dealing with grief while also transitioning from high school into “the real world” which gave me something to look forward to and place my focus on instead of centering my thoughts on my grief and loss. I’m not saying that I avoided my feelings; I just was able to process them quicker. It seems that because I had so much to look forward to, my mind just pushed me to continue forward. Then jump to 2019 when my stepdad dies, and I’ve already graduated college, done a considerable amount of traveling, moved to another country, and seemed to be starting to create a new life for myself and BAM. My world crumbled right in front of my eyes. This time I didn’t have anything significant to look forward to. I wasn’t dating anyone, not planning on having children anytime soon, and didn’t have any exotic travel plans. What was the next stage in my life that I could put my focus on?

My mind kept telling me to buy a plane ticket and get away and just be alone, but my heart told me to move back home and be with my family. For once in my life, I listened to my heart. The months following my dad’s passing were filled with tears, questioning, soul searching, connecting with friends who were experiencing the same pain that I was, and trying to find my life path. I allowed myself to sit with my grief and truly feel it. Allow it to wash over me, and I gave myself space to be sad, which, if you know me, you know that I have the unhealthy habit of avoiding being sad. I faced the rawest and ugliest emotions that surfaced, and instead of suppressing them, I allowed them and myself just to be. I allowed myself to feel. I made space for the negative. I realized that the more I allowed myself to be washed over with emotions and let myself be vulnerable, the more I began to feel like myself again.

I’m not going to say that allowing yourself to feel these emotions of heartache, incredible sadness, and uncontrollable grief is an easy task. That is a lie. It is extremely tough. It is opening old wounds and new ones and allowing life to dump salt all over them and endure the pain in order to heal your heart. There are days when you just want to feel no longer, and you would pay someone to deplete you of all emotions and feelings. Then there are days that you beg that the sadness and numbness will go away, and your heart will be filled with joy again. You almost feel guilty for wanting to be happy because you want to honor your loved one and the hole in your heart that they left behind, but at the same time, you know that they would want you to feel bliss again and to live your life to the fullest and fill that hole with new memories.

If I were to sit here and tell you that during this past year, I never experience joy or happiness, I would be a liar. There were moments when I experienced joy. There were days when my heart didn’t hurt as much. I had moments that made me smile and made me think, “Finally, I’m getting better.” But as anyone who has dealt with grief will tell you, there is no timeline to grief. You may feel on top of the world one day, and the next day you have this overwhelming sadness sweep over you and feels as though you took 20 steps backward. On days when I would feel this extreme sadness and emptiness, I would blame myself for not feeling better, for not being “better” with processing my dad’s death. I would tell my mom that I was so mad at myself for not being where I thought I should be in the process. I naturally put a lot of pressure on myself to be “strong” and to get over things quickly, but it doesn’t matter how much you want your sadness to go away, your heart doesn’t go according to your timeline, it creates its own.

Death creates an end and a beginning in the life timelines of those left behind. For me, my dad dying also marked the departure of who I was before. The person who I believed myself to be was no longer. I would stand in front of the mirror and not recognize the person looking back. I felt like a shell of the person I once was. I thought I died with him, except I was still physically here. What I didn’t realize is that although part of me ceased to exist on that day, a new piece of me was being born.

Although this new beginning started with sadness and grief from my dad’s death, it has also been filled with soul searching, healing, self-discovery, and self-love. It has sent me on a spiritual journey that, to be honest, if my dad wouldn’t have died, I probably would have never embarked on it. I began to rediscover passions that I felt like I had lost, such as writing. I am constantly evolving and discovering who I am. This isn’t to say that I no longer experience moments of sadness or grief.

02/02/2020 marked exactly one year since my dad died. The weeks leading up to that date felt so dreadful to me. I didn’t want to experience it, and I tried to avoid it at all costs. I was in Panamá, traveling around the country, and visiting friends and one thing that I knew was that day I didn’t want to spend it in the city. I wanted to be on a beach. I tried to convince a friend to come along, but I ended up going alone.

On the morning of his death anniversary, I woke up and looked at pictures of my dad, and instead of crying, I said thank you. Thank you for being with me during this past year. Thank you for pushing me to keep moving forward. Thank you for the signs that you send me that you are with me. Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for helping me rediscover my passions. Then I thanked him for making it possible for me to take that day and spend it on an island in the middle of the Caribbean.

The island that I escaped to is remote and two hours away from the city, and the best part is that there is no cellphone signal. The only other people on the island were a couple visiting from Chile. I was able to be alone and cut off from the outside world so that I could be with my thoughts and my emotions. I had been avoiding this day for weeks because I kept fearing the extreme sadness I would feel, but on that day, I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel empty. Instead, I felt grateful and happy for having my dad be a part of my life for so many years. I enjoyed my own company, and I reflected on how far I had come in the past year.

Being on that beach reminded me of what it is like to feel alive. The waves crashing against the shore and the sand between my toes created a sensation of overwhelming happiness. My heart felt what it hadn’t in the past twelve months. It felt full. For a moment, I felt almost guilty for not being sad the entire day, and that’s when I saw a hummingbird in the palm tree where I was sitting. Hummingbirds and butterflies are my signs from my dad. I knew that it was my dad reassuring me that it was alright to be happy and that he was with me.

Reflecting on that day and this past year as a whole, I can confidently say that it has been a whirlwind of emotions and endless self-questioning. I know that there will be days in the future in which I will cry because I miss him telling me that it is all going to work out or simply because I want him here to share in my happiness. My dad may not physically be here, but he is with me every single second of the day. On my darkest days, when I feel like I need him the most, my reoccurring dream almost comes true, I can feel a weight around my shoulder, and there is a voice in my head that says, “Let’s do this.” And here I am, doing it, one day at a time.

This post is dedicated to the memory of my stepdad, Barry Glenn Gernert. He showed me that being a father isn’t by blood; it is based on the love that you have for your children, and he loved us more than anything. I love you Dad.