Thank you for understanding. Sometimes I'm not sure I would have wanted to say goodbye to my dad. To actually know that I would be losing him would be very hard. To say one last goodbye would never be enough. One more is never enough with someone you care about. However, I think about our last phone call, less than 48 hours before he died. Of course I had no idea it would be our last. Wow, the things I would have said if I had known....

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I grieve everyday for my T, I feel nobody understands, infact I know some who really don't understand. I have sobbed and sobbed and had to hide my pain.

Some really don't understand the grief process. Society has a way of making sure you rush through it and "get on with your life." Places of employment (such as mine) give five days of bereavement... sure... it only takes five days to work through the loss of your father so you can get back to the point to which you can work again. I am so ****ing tired of people who give off the impression that it was quite some time ago, so it's sort of commonplace information now. It has been four ****ing months. That's nothing. What people don't understand is that everyday, for the last four months, I feel like I get kicked in the stomach, again and again, as if I am hearing the news for the first time multiple times per day.

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But I do know that my T would have wanted me to be me, to do what we worked so hard to get to. My mentor. Your Dad would have wanted you to do well, to be that Doctor...

Yes, you are right about this. T and I are working a little bit on how I can still value the worth of things, even though my dad is gone. The thought of the day I graduate (in 2013!!) makes me cry already, and it's four years away. At my school (I have seen this since I graduated there with my Masters), they graduate the doctoral students by having them line up and saying their names with "doctor" in front of their names, and also state the title of their dissertations. Then they have the students sit with the faculty rather than go back to their original seats because they aren't students anymore-- they are now psychologists, at the same level as the professors. I cannot even make sense out of the fact that my father will never be able to see this. All I can say is that he died six days after I started doctoral school, so at least he got to know that I started, and I got to tell him how it was. He was the first person that I called when I got my acceptance letter, and I will never forget how he shared in my joy that day. He knew, more than anyone else, how it went so much deeper than my acceptance to school. He knew that we were celebrating because there was a time in my life in which I was so psychologically ill that I had to repeatedly drop out of community college-- and look how far I have come.

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Grief takes as long as it takes, it's something we carry, and yes it makes me angry but I'll use that energy to keep going.

Thank you for pointing out that anger is an energy that keeps us going. I share this belief with you. When I can find the anger that is usually buried, and hiding, deep within my depression that means that I can engage... I can express... it certainly is an energy. Over the last 3+ years of working with T, I have been in sessions in which I was in the deepest of my depressive episodes. Sometimes, there would be glimmers of anger at him (because we all know how good I am at getting pissed off at him, lol). It was at these moments that he would engage with me through that anger, sometimes purposely pissing me off more, because he knew that's where the energy came from.

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I wanted to share, to help, I'm thinking of you pinksoil.

And I am thinking of you. Grief is not limited to death. I am sorry for your loss, as well.