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Grief Doesn't Get Smaller. You Grow Around It.
Same show, same me, new name on the door. If your app says You're Not Too Much and you were looking for Different, Not Broken — you're in the right place, nothing has changed except the sign.
There's that saying that all roads lead to Rome. In my life, all roads lead back to my dad.
If there's something annoying I do, it came from him. If there's something good I do, it came from him too. I'm good at business because he was abhorrent at it — I took over his practice at 21 because it was a mess and that is not how you're supposed to do anything. He was also the best doctor I have ever met, and I don't say that because he was my dad. Sometimes those two things don't go together.
August 21st, he will have been gone for ten years. We recorded this two days out.
Here's the thing about ten years. In the first week I remember thinking there was no way we would ever get here — that I could not be a person for a decade without him, that it was structurally impossible. Except I'm here. And I have a ten-year-old who got six weeks with him, and who was six weeks early, which is a level of detail the universe did not have to include and included anyway.
There's an idea that you survive grief. That you get to the other side of it.
There is no other side of grief. It doesn't end. It doesn't stop. Some days it might as well be the day it happened, and some days are worse.
My grief is not smaller. I've just grown around it. The life around him got so much bigger that it takes up less of my brain — but he's still at the middle of it, I still talk about him like he's here, he's still in every decision I make, and he still drives me fricking crazy, which I assume is the job.
I tell you about the drive to get everybody dinner, the first time I'd properly been alone since he died, and asking out loud into an empty car for anything at all. And what was in the text box on my phone when I picked it up again. I didn't type it. I'm not a woo-woo afterlife person. I'm just telling you what was there.
And I leave you with my youngest, who asked what Pop Pop's real name was, found out how Jewish naming works, and reached a conclusion I could not argue with.
Ten years. He hasn't left. Here's to a long time more of missing him.
This one is about my dad, and about grief. If today isn't the day for that, it'll still be here when it is.
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Transcript
There's that saying that all roads lead to Rome.
Speaker:Everything takes you back to the same thing basically.
Speaker:And in my life, all roads basically lead back to my dad.
Speaker:If there's something annoying I do, it probably came from him.
Speaker:If there's something good I do, it probably came in some version from him.
Speaker:I'm really good at business, but I'm really good at business because
Speaker:he was abhorrent at business, and I learned how to be good at business from
Speaker:watching him be absolutely the worst business person who has ever existed.
Speaker:And, like, I literally had to take over his business, running his business, his
Speaker:practice, when I was 21 years old 'cause I was like, "This is a mess and this is
Speaker:not how you're supposed to do anything."
Speaker:I had no idea what I was doing, but even having no idea what I was doing, I still
Speaker:knew more than he did. And I certainly had better instincts about it than he did.
Speaker:He was just the worst businessman.
Speaker:Anyway, best doctor I've ever met though, by a margin of a lot, and I
Speaker:don't just say that 'cause he was my dad.
Speaker:He really was just an exceptional, incredible doctor.
Speaker:And sometimes those two things just don't work together.
Speaker:Like, sometimes you can't, you can't be an exceptional caretaker
Speaker:and also care about going to 16 minutes on a 15-minute session.
Speaker:It just, like, it just doesn't work that way.
Speaker:I got my sense of humor from him.
Speaker:If you wanna know I make a lot of dead dad jokes, and, and those are never
Speaker:going away, but, like, I made those jokes to my dad when he was alive.
Speaker:So, like, at some point they were live dad jokes. We used to tell him all the
Speaker:time that if he ever died, we were just gonna reanimate him and do, like, urgent
Speaker:care at Bernie's, 'cause we were running an urgent care at the time and just,
Speaker:like, and just, like, put strings on him.
Speaker:Mind you, he was a psychiatrist, so he talked to a lot of people who
Speaker:were grieving someone, and if you ever told him that someone you cared
Speaker:about died or if you said, "Oh, I lost my mother," he would say, "Well,
Speaker:that was careless," like, instantly.
Speaker:Like, there was no delay.
Speaker:"That was careless." On the back of my desk, there's a bottle that it's an
Speaker:empty glass bottle that says, "Expert Opinions." He bought the bottles at
Speaker:the dollar store, and he put the labels on them because they made him laugh.
Speaker:The other one said, "Up doc," so that when people walked into his office,
Speaker:they would see the bottle that said "Up doc," and say, "What's up, doc?"
Speaker:And he'd go, "Not much. How about you?"
Speaker:And giggle to himself uncontrollably.
Speaker:So if you wanna know how I got like this, I came by it honestly.
Speaker:There was no hope for me.
Speaker:He and I were, were two peas in an inseparable pod, and
Speaker:all roads lead to the old guy.
Speaker:But I say all of that because August 21st, he will be gone for 10 years, which
Speaker:feels like an impossible amount of time.
Speaker:And you know how you build, like, these things up in your head, and
Speaker:they don't actually mean anything, but somehow they mean something?
Speaker:And I remember right after he died thinking, "There's no way that we
Speaker:will ever reach a point where I can say that he's been gone for 10 years.
Speaker:That's impossible.
Speaker:That can't happen.
Speaker:I can't have been a person for 10 years without him." Except I'm here, 10 years
Speaker:without him, and I have a 10-year-old who was six weeks old 10 years ago. She
Speaker:had six weeks with him. Just to, like, add a finer point to that, she was six weeks
Speaker:early. Funny how the universe works.
Speaker:But yeah, we're sitting here.
Speaker:Somehow 10 years has passed, and there's this idea that, like, grief goes away.
Speaker:You survive grief, you get to the other side of grief.
Speaker:There's no other side of grief.
Speaker:It doesn't end.
Speaker:It doesn't stop.
Speaker:Some days it might as well be the day it happened.
Speaker:Some days are worse.
Speaker:When, when something like that happens, even if you knew it was coming,
Speaker:the shock of it shields you from a lot of what you're supposed to be
Speaker:feeling or what you could be feeling.
Speaker:And so the day or two after, at least this was my experience, it wasn't
Speaker:this, like, deluge of uncontrollable emotions, even though it was really hard.
Speaker:I didn't… I just remember, like, feeling like I was outside
Speaker:of my body the whole time.
Speaker:Like, not knowing, not knowing how I was supposed to process
Speaker:through this and, like, just having to remind myself constantly.
Speaker:There was, um… We were trying to do something for his memorial.
Speaker:I don't remember what we were trying to do, but there was a place in France
Speaker:that was his favorite place in the world, and every time I thought of it,
Speaker:I wanted to say the Champs-Élysées, but that's not what it was.
Speaker:There was another place that had a similar name, and I could never remember
Speaker:it when— unless he had just said it.
Speaker:And so we were trying to incorporate it into something, I don't even
Speaker:remember what, and, I just remember being like, "Oh, well let me ask
Speaker:him." Funny story, you can't do that.
Speaker:And then, like, just weird stuff that happened, like I had left the house,
Speaker:and it was the first time that I had truly been by myself the whole time.
Speaker:So no baby with me, no husband, I'm going to go get food for everybody.
Speaker:My best friend was here from out of town and he was literally only there for, like,
Speaker:16 hours to do a quick turnaround, and it was like right before the funeral.
Speaker:And I was driving to, I think I was going to Wendy's to get everybody dinner.
Speaker:And I was just talking to him, and I was just like, "I don't know if anybody's
Speaker:gonna hear this, but I'm by myself in the car, and I don't know what else to
Speaker:do with the airspace that I have, so I'm just gonna talk to you." And so I just was
Speaker:like, "I just wanna know where you are.
Speaker:I just wanna know that you're okay.
Speaker:If somebody could send anything to let me know, that'd be great." And so I had
Speaker:been using voice-to-text on my phone to coordinate one of my friends getting
Speaker:airfare to come down for the funeral.
Speaker:And so I did that, sent the message, put my phone down, drove, got the food,
Speaker:came back, picked my phone up again.
Speaker:And in the box where I, where you're supposed to either, like, speak into
Speaker:the phone or, or text into the phone, it said, "Hey, do you have a second?"
Speaker:That is the way my dad started every phone call.
Speaker:If you answered the phone, he would say, "Hey, do you have a second?" Every time.
Speaker:I didn't type that.
Speaker:I didn't call that.
Speaker:I didn't say it into my phone.
Speaker:It was just there in the box.
Speaker:And I am not a big believer in, like, woo-woo afterlife stuff, but that
Speaker:was about as clear as you could get that he was like, "I'm good.
Speaker:I got this." And he's probably sent me, or I choose to believe he
Speaker:has sent me 20 different messages.
Speaker:More than that, way more than that in the 10 years since he's been gone.
Speaker:And I don't know how it's been 10 years, but I also know that I don't
Speaker:feel any different about him today than I did the day he died or the
Speaker:day after he died or the day before he died when I was terrified that
Speaker:he was about to die because he was.
Speaker:Spoiler, he was.
Speaker:My grief is not smaller.
Speaker:I've just grown around it.
Speaker:I have a much bigger life because life has gone on, and he's still
Speaker:at the middle of it, but the life around him is still so much bigger.
Speaker:Is, is so much bigger so that it doesn't take up as much of my brain.
Speaker:But I still think about him every day.
Speaker:I still talk about him all the time like he's here.
Speaker:He's still integral to, like, every decision I make.
Speaker:I can still hear the things he says in my brain as responses to stuff all the time.
Speaker:And somehow he's been gone for 10 years, but he hasn't left.
Speaker:He's still right here.
Speaker:He still drives me fricking crazy.
Speaker:Just because I think that's what parents are supposed to do, right?
Speaker:I don't know how it's been 10 years.
Speaker:I can't… I both remember every part of the last 10 years in excruciating detail,
Speaker:and I also can't believe we've come this far, had this much, done this many things.
Speaker:I can't believe there's so much he hasn't been here for.
Speaker:I can't believe he never got to meet my youngest.
Speaker:She would be his favorite person.
Speaker:Not that my oldest would not also be his favorite person, but my youngest
Speaker:has, like, a certain murderous streak in her that he really would've loved.
Speaker:He would've— That would've been, like, his favorite thing in the world.
Speaker:It, it's just wild to kind of wrap your brain around having come so far and yet
Speaker:feeling like some things just have never changed, and it's never gonna change.
Speaker:He's… I'm gonna miss him every day for the rest of my life.
Speaker:I'll leave you with a story that
Speaker:perfectly explains my relationship with my dad and how my children are so much
Speaker:like him, despite the fact that they really never got any time with him.
Speaker:And also it's just hella funny.
Speaker:I'm gonna tell this story for the rest of my life 'cause it's that funny.
Speaker:So I was… We've been spending a lot of time at my mom's house, who lives
Speaker:only a couple of blocks away from me because she's been sick and we've been
Speaker:taking care of her, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:And so I took my youngest over to see her 'cause I, I don't know if
Speaker:I had to take the garbage out or something, but it was a quick trip,
Speaker:and she saw something of my dad's in the house and had asked a question
Speaker:about him that my mom had answered.
Speaker:And then as we left, she said, "Mom, I meant to ask you while we were
Speaker:there, what was Pop Pop's real name?"
Speaker:And I said, "Uh, his name was Lawrence Benjamin Ehrlich."
Speaker:And she goes, "Lawrence?
Speaker:Is that why you're named Lauren?" And I said, "No, not actually.
Speaker:My mom just really liked the name.
Speaker:"Jewish people don't usually"—at least our kind of Jewish people, I didn't
Speaker:explain to her the difference—"but don't usually name people after living people.
Speaker:We only name people after people who have already died." And she
Speaker:goes, straight-faced, "So if you wanna name somebody after someone
Speaker:living, you have to kill them?"
Speaker:And I went…
Speaker:"No, baby."
Speaker:And I was trying so hard not to laugh at her, but I was dying inside.
Speaker:I went, "No, baby, you just, like, pick a different name." And she
Speaker:goes, "Oh, that's probably better."
Speaker:And I was just imagining my mom just, like, shanking my dad 'cause she
Speaker:wanted to name me Lauren, and that would've fit their relationship,
Speaker:but also not the way it worked.
Speaker:So anyway, we have my youngest's seal of approval to just pick a different
Speaker:name if we don't wanna do a murder.
Speaker:Though she did seem fairly on board for the murder, which is her whole vibe, and
Speaker:goes back to what I said earlier about how much she would've loved this fricking kid.
Speaker:But yeah, somehow it's been 10 years and he doesn't get to see moments
Speaker:like that, and that fricking sucks.
Speaker:But also, it only sucks because it was cool to have him around for
Speaker:as long as we did, and here's to a long time more of missing him.
Speaker:Actually, it'd be kind of cool not to miss him.
Speaker:I wish I could wake up one day and just be like, "I don't like that guy,"
Speaker:and then not have that to think about.
Speaker:But it's kind of the bad part of having a parent who's really cool and your,
Speaker:your other half in this life is that sometimes they're gonna be super fricking
Speaker:rude and die, and then you have to, like, figure out what to do with the
Speaker:rest of your life, and that's bullshit.
Speaker:But we've done an okay job of it.
