I see these are still being used and figured this would be a safe outlet to put my feelings down about this.

TLDR; How do you manage grief? Especially over the loss of a parent?

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In June of last year, I lost my Dad to cancer. He had Bone Marrow which progressed to Leukemia. When he was diagnosed, the Doctors told him he wouldn't live past a certain time frame and he surpassed them by 3 years. He would've been 77 in August of last year.

It's been a very hard for me as I try to be strong, especially for my mom. I'm the youngest of 6. We're a blended family, like the Brady Bunch as our local newspaper called us. Two on my mom's side, 3 on my Dad's and just me with my parents. Being the youngest, I was Daddy's girl. Even as a grown adult. All of my siblings are 10+ years older than me, so there's a huge age gap. They were all pretty much out of High School when I was growing up and old enough to know what was going on. I grew up like I was an only child. So I got all of Daddy's attention and my 2nd youngest sister admitted to me that she was jealous of that because Dad was always gone. He was a trucker when they were growing up and hardly home.

Whenever someone I know or am close to passes away, I don't usually cry a whole lot. Yeah, I'm sad they're no longer here, but that's different. When my Dad passed away, I thought that would've changed. I was at work when he passed away, which was my fear. I had just started a new, very first, full-time job a couple months prior, so I was in that transition phase and couldn't really afford the time off. My manager and co-workers were AWESOME about everything and even though we were short staffed at the time, we've got pretty much a full house now (I work in health care in a group home setting with individuals who have disabilities), but they managed to cover my shifts and I didn't have to worry about any of that. In my previous job I would've, most likely, had to get them covered.

He was moved to my place; that's a whole other story I wasn't happy how it played out, but I did it because it was Dad, and I didn't feel comfortable leaving my mom there by herself with him as weak as he was. He did NOT want Hospice, so I called my uncle who lost his partner, my aunt - they never got married, to cancer just before Dad was diagnosed. Thankfully he was able to make it, because that night, Dad went. Like I said, I was at work. My manager was on her 2 week vacation and I felt SO bad calling her the next morning. She was so understanding. The funny thing was, that night I was flipping through channels at work and Field of Dreams was on (one of his favorites; we took him to the site twice, once on his birthday and got a signed ball from the "ghost" players - they even sang "Happy Birthday" mid picture after we told one of the players when we went to get their autographs and as we were getting a picture, they started singing and I SO wish I would've gotten a video) and I stopped to watch. Soon after, I got a call from the county sheriff's department that he was outside and came to tell me that my Dad was gone.

I wanted to start crying, but I knew I couldn't because I was working and if the clients saw, especially one of them, he would use it against me. Every which way that I was afraid of how he would go, happened. When I was at work. When my manager was on vacation. When I wasn't able to take time off to be with him. That's the biggest one. I only went to spend time with him on my days off, when I was able. Which wasn't enough. My manager lost her dad to cancer just a few months after and got to spend time with him. I even had to work on my birthday, my day off, because her dad was so close.

Besides his funeral when I finally let it out in a group hug with my closest friends at the cemetery and a few other times after, that's about the only time I've ever really cried. I didn't even have a chance to really cry all that week prior when planning the funeral because things were so crazy. When my manager asked me to cover her shift on my birthday, that's when I cried again because I was essentially jealous because she got to be with him when he went.

Over the summer I had a conversation with one of my friends who lost her dad a year ago to cancer as well and she told me that 6 months after her dad passed was when it really hit her. For me, that was Christmas and it never happened.

Sorry for the ramble and thank you for sticking around this long. If you've read it all the way through, my question to you is: How do you handle grief? Especially to someone close like a parent? I feel like I haven't been able to grieve properly and it's not fair to him. Like my friend said, I'm likely in that "numb" stage, but it's almost been a year (5 more months) since he passed away.

Alicia