Initial Grief: Six Months of Lessons

By AJ Boughner

It has officially passed six months (11/20/2023) since my dad left us for a higher calling. We have been told in our journey, "Sometimes God needs angels both on earth and in heaven," and my dad became one of heaven's angels. In the last six months, grief has taught me a few lessons I needed to learn. I wanted to share those here:

1. Make connections with others.

2. Hold your friends close and your loved ones closer.

3. Live Life to the fullest.

4. Never regret anything left undone.

5. What is meant to be, will be.

6. God's present.

1. Make connections with others:

During the days of his hospitalization, we had many people in the gathering room with us in what we referred to as "The circle of trust." Some of these people were family, friends, and people I had not spent a lot of intimate time with. During the six days he was hospitalized, we made connections with others. I was phoning updates to his friends who were concerned about him. I even called his coworker the day he passed to share with him he had left us. I had never really associated with some of these friends or coworkers much before, and sharing such crushing news with them at a time when we were all vulnerable meant to continue these relationships. It would have been odd, in my belief, to make this phone call that my dad passed to a coworker of his and then never talk to him again. Having one of his close friends with us the day we decided to withdraw care and let him go, it was tough to see his feelings as raw as they were. I have been used to seeing these people so strong in the ways they carry themselves, broken to their core, losing someone they loved without really saying a proper goodbye.

At the viewing, our family was so overwhelmed with the amount of people who showed up to support him. He mentored young business professionals we had no idea existed, families he worked for and impacted, bosses who loved his drive for their successes, and countless golf friends. A group from a former job shared with me that when the office was thrown into disarray from a lawsuit and scandal, he organized a coalition of his colleagues and helped them resume building and find jobs in their respective fields. To keep these individuals in our lives, we had to try to connect with them. Every so often, I will find myself getting drinks with a coworker of his. He shared with me that he never packs a lunch, and my dad and he would always go out and get lunch together. He shared that he walks alone to and from lunch, reminiscing about old times. For nearly two decades, my dad made it a point to get lunch with a colleague at an old firm daily. He continued that trend on Wednesdays when he would be in town. My dad was planning on having lunch with that coworker the day he was rushed to the hospital. I had to make that uncomfortable call/text to that long-time lunch buddy that my dad was rushed to the hospital and would be missing that lunch for possibly an indefinite amount of time, if not forever.

I am writing in my memoir about "people wanting to help." We have made connections in this process of friends and extended individuals that we reach out to help us with tasks because of how they loved my dad. There is a moment of gracious appreciation for my dad that I shared in the memoir from an old firm. My mom had to prepare a complicated tax document for the tax deadline. She reached out to an old boss of his and asked to have this form completed, sharing she would cover the cost needed to get it done in time. After finding someone to do it, they called her back and shared, "Don't worry about the cost. This one is on us, for Jim". It is the helpful people in our lives who my dad impacted that we need to continue to make connections with.

(My mom, her friend Mary, and I; Tom and my Dad on one of their overseas golf trips; and my cousin Carl and I at a WVU Basketball game)

2. Hold your friends close, and hold your loved ones closer.

This one is pretty straightforward: always keep the closest people in your life near and dear to you because you will never know when they leave you. In all of this, this was a lesson I learned early on. It was six weeks to the day and nearly the same time of day that my dad's best friend for more than 50 years also passed away. I have written a few times about how impactful my relationship with his friend Tom had been during the time my dad was in the hospital, and I always felt comfortable; if I had to reach out to anyone, I could call Tom at any time of day, and he would be there for me. I often joked as well that I could call my cousin (my mom's nephew Jim), but he would probably tell me to "suck it up," and then he would hang up on me. This, of course, would never happen. As I discovered in the hospital the people who were with us for those long days and even into the night, I learned that these individuals had soft spots in their hearts. Despite their formidable and rough exteriors. If I called my mom's nephew, I am sure he would say, "Come to the house and stay the night so I can make sure you are safe."

I never want to worry others. Holding our friends close, I still have some amount of guard up. Not that I do not trust them, but because I don't wish to worry others. I have long suffered from depression, anxiety, and recently ADHD. After a long time, I finally decided to go the medication route, which has helped tremendously. Thankfully I was on the medication, when my dad passed. It has allowed me to get up every day and be productive. I will still feel sad. I need to feel more comfortable about reaching out to friends and family when I need them. In conversations with other friends of my dad and people he held close to him, they have stepped up to say, "If you ever need anything, call us, never hesitate, just call."

Holding our loved ones closer than our friends, we sometimes need to be with a family member. One of the relationships that has become stronger for me has been my relationship with my dad's nephew. He and his family used to live in New Albany, Ohio, and we would stay there when my dad and I would go to Ohio State football games. Recently, he moved from Ohio to Morgantown, West Virginia. We kept saying, my dad and I, that we would get down there to visit him and his family, but the times, for whatever reason, never worked out. My dad's nephew (my cousin) shared with me after my dad passed, "This is not what I meant when I said we needed to spend more time together." Those moments were tough for us together. In a previous post, I shared discussing grief with him in his basement bar. We realized together that this loss would help him in the future when he loses a parent. He also had received a message from my dad one of the nights he was at his house sitting alone in his bedroom, in which my dad shared, "You need to be for this family what I was." He told me, "Okay, Uncle Jim, whatever that means, I will be it". I said, "Switzerland, he wants you to be neutral in your decision-making regarding us."

When I think about relationships with family members, some relationships have become more substantial, and some relationships have remained distant. Families are complex. On both sides of the family tree are relatives we do not associate with, either because they do not associate or make time for us or because we became distant, too. My dad always, at least, put in the effort despite not having that same effort returned most of the time. He reached out to family living across the nation when the pandemic arrived because he knew they were in for a rough ride. He never heard anything back. He was the backbone of a family reunion. If it weren't for him and his planning, the family likely wouldn't have been able to remain close. He was patient with those who had previously burned bridges with him in the family. He knew it wasn't them as much as distance and time lost.

It occurs to me while writing this: I have to make the same effort my dad did. When he was in the hospital, I did not want a particular family member at the hospital to be with him because I knew this family member did not have the emotions present to handle a catastrophic loss. They missed crucial points in his life and the life of us, and in my eyes, I didn't think they deserved to be with us in those moments. They were surprised to hear my dad was in Las Vegas gambling and golfing when this all started. At the hospital, they tried to engage in small talk with me about the dog. In thirty years of my life, with no communication, I thought this was all they had to show for it: small talk.

The effort I have to make is to reach out to these distant relatives and at least attempt to have a relationship with them. At the time, right after my dad passed, it was shared with me that cousins, who I hardly knew anything about, suddenly wanted my address but didn't want to ask me for it. I figured it was because they were intimidated to contact me when they had never been in my life. After having my closest aunt in my family provide them with my number, I waited and finally attempted to reach out. My questions were answered. Their shared absences in my life were something I always wondered about. Through their struggles with personal traumas, they just didn't have the time needed to form relationships. As I sit here writing this, I realize now that I have to make a continued effort like my dad did. Keep your friends close and your loved ones closer. We never know when we will lose them.

3. Live Life to the Fullest

4. Never Regret Anything Left Undone

I can combine these two points into one. For the sake of this post, I wanted to share six lessons I learned in my first six months, and both of these lessons are important but not as long and thoughtful as others. My dad always lived his life to the fullest without regrets. While shredding files from his work while my mom was away, I came across a spreadsheet that included dates and concerts. My mom described it as my dad's fun activity list. Concerts, comedians, weddings, birthday celebrations, golf trips, vacations, etc., were on this list. In all facets of his life, he made it a point to see the artists he wanted to see, the games he wanted to be at, and the players he wanted to be up close and personal with. In my eulogy to him, I mentioned how he went to Three Rivers Stadium every day when Clemente was nearing his 3,000th hit. Little did my dad know, it was the last hit of his career. The countless things we have done in the sporting world go unmatched.

We never made it to the Baseball Hall of Fame together as planned. Still, we had a Hall of Fame experience going to a game at every stadium: Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Derek Jeter, Jimmy Rollins, Mariano Rivera, Roy Halladay, and Miguel Cabrera. These are just some of the players we saw going to games. Some of the milestones we got to see together included seeing two of the players who ultimately got to the 700 home run club: Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols. We were at games where Bonds and Pujols hit respective homers in the 700-plus category. In Tampa Bay, the Rays were playing the Tigers. The first pitch Miguel Cabrera saw was a homer. I believe he won the triple crown that season (he led the league in homers, hits, and batting average). My dad and I went to a 2013 NLDS game involving the Pirates and the Cardinals in a blacked-out PNC Park. My parents went to see Lady Gaga in Las Vegas and spent more time on the plane to and from than they spent in Las Vegas. They were there solely for that show.

My dad would never have been able to do everything he did if he lived with regrets. Trying to follow in his footsteps, I had missed the mark when Tom passed. I regret not reaching out more to check in on him, but a call with a man who has, day after day, been there for me since Tom passed said to me on the phone, "AJ, if he wanted to tell you how he was doing, he would have, you talked to him daily." I needed to hear that. I am always appreciative of his words of wisdom. We can't live life thinking about "what could have been." We cannot go through life questioning what the plan for us is. We have to push through even when we are in our darkest days. To quote NF again, in the song "Hope", he shares that success is "it's a person that can see the bright side through the dark times when there ain't one". Pushing through our darkness and finding the light is living life without looking back or having regrets.

5. What is meant to be will be

6. God's Present

I am in the stressful process of looking at houses, and one of the ideals I have found is "what is meant to be, will be." We will walk into a home and know it is the place to be for my future. We haven't done that yet, but it reminds me we will get there. This is another place where the lessons learned are similar because God is present in all these moments. "Thy will be done". We will get there together. The lessons we will learn in these first six months have been heard and learned. We have been patient, sometimes frustrated, but God is here. He is listening to us. He understands our frustrations. This isn't a perfect world because of the temptation first discovered in the Garden of Eden. Our worlds will merge someday, and with all the turmoil and natural disasters, the time could be coming sooner than we all believe. We will be reunited with our loved ones someday. My dad is here with us because God is with us. In the first weeks after my dad passed, my faith was strained for a bit of time. I always believed that God was present, but it was still frustrating. I lost my father. It hurt terribly. It's like the saying "when it rains, it pours"; that is precisely how I felt. One of the thoughts I have that hurts to say, but maybe it was meant to be that my dad taught us to live life to the fullest without regrets, to hold our loved ones close, to make efforts with those who don't make efforts with us; to keep connections with those nearest to him; and to show us that every day is a gift from God.