Losing a parent leaves a hole in you that will never fill. You learn to live with it, but it never goes away. And even years later, when you’ve learned to live with it and you think you’re doing fine, one day, all of a sudden, the grief will come back and wash over you and overwhelm you again. Usually it fades as quickly as it showed up, but it’s always there under the surface waiting for the odd moment to come back, to wash over your day. Today is one of those days.

It sounds weird and feels uncomfortable and weird to think it, but in this new reality of a pandemic, I find myself almost glad that my father passed away before this all happened. (Of course, I would’ve preferred to never lose him. He would’ve been high risk during this though, so these thoughts go through my head). I managed to spend almost every day up there with him during the two months he was in the hospital. My mom stayed in his room, even sleeping in there. I often slept in the waiting room. We had two months with him that, in the pandemic, we would’ve been robbed of. We brought music to play for him. His room had cards and drawings and flowers and balloons. We celebrated his birthday at the hospital. We were in the room with him when he passed away. A room full of people who loved him, there to say goodbye as he left us. And we had the funeral. Days of planning it together. Putting together picture boards, sharing stories, picking out flowers he’d like, colors he’d like, music he’d enjoy. Days at the funeral home, everyone sharing memories and stories. An entire day of the mass and the meal. Days with people who knew exactly what you were going through because they were going through it too. The worst was after it was all over. When life went back to normal, but without him. That’s when the loss was most apparent, when the hole in you made its presence most known. In that moment when you would’ve picked up the phone to call him, to tell him about good news, to vent about annoying things, to see if he wanted to go to lunch. Now, you mostly get the worst part. We wouldn’t have been able to have all that time to grieve together it if happened now. We’d be banned from the hospital. We’d be stuck not knowing what he was really going through. We’d be at home, living every day the same way we always do, without all that time to grieve together. The worst part would be the only part, if we lost him now. And he would’ve died alone, instead of in a room full of people who loved him.

Grief sucks. It leaves a hole in you like nothing else, a hole that never fills. And it never truly leaves. Grief in a pandemic is a cruel, empty terror. So many of the ways of coping through the grief are torn from us. Losing people is always terrifying. Losing people during a pandemic needs a new word because none are adequate.