You will never be "old enough" to handle the loss of a parent. You shouldn't be expected to. How do you cope with the loss of a part of you? How you do come to terms with the realisation that your parent will never see your little daughter grow up?
I lost my father 2 months ago and I haven't grieved for him. Not because I wasn't close to him or being a parent myself, I'm old enough to handle it, but because the minute I break down and sob for him is the moment I will have to let him go. And I'm not ready to do that. Letting him go will be the most difficult thing I will ever do and I know I do not have the strength for that.
I am the second of two daughters. Indians are largely son-crazy and my father was the happiest man alive with my sister and I. He never desired a son, nor did he rue that one of us wasn't a boy. It's tradition for Indian men to distribute sweets the day they become fathers. Very few do this when they become fathers the second time... to a second girl. He did.
The loss is unbearable. Like an open wound that will not heal, that will not close, that will not let you forget that that part of you is not whole. There is no how-to for this. No quick fix. No five stages of grief. Nothing. It's sorrow at its darkest and worst. The light in this is the privilege of being the daughter of a man who respected her, loved her, protected her and will not leave her.
