I wish I could bottle it, give it as a gift.

When suffering isn't so bad after-all.

A couple weeks ago, I was talking business with a friend and she asked how I was doing. “Good days, bad days. Good moments, bad moments,” I said. “Had a little blip there where I sat in my dark family room and binged Dr. Pimple Popper until I fell asleep, just to wake up and do it all over again. But I’m feeling like I’m more above water now and able to start dreaming again. And that’s why I called …” I continued, before she interrupted.

“It’s called a depression. Us high achievers refer to them as “blips,” but it’s just one of those good ‘ol depressions.”

“Right,” I laughed. Of course, I’ve been depressed since my dad’s passing. And it may continue at various levels for years to come. Grief is unbearable, and initially it took everything in me not to try and squirm and panic my way out of it like I was trapped in a straight jacket. But the more I cling to God and allow him to meet me in the depths of my sorrow, the more I’m finding grief doesn’t have to be so confining. If you let it, it can break chains you didn’t know were wound around you. You can be freer than you’ve ever been.

I now know, joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin.

My parents have the same birthday and I remember growing up thinking that all parents shared the same birthday—like it was a federal holiday. “When is your parent’s birthday?” I’d ask a friend on the playground. “February 2^nd and October 23^rd,” they’d say.

I’d just stand there and blink. “I don’t get it.”

Today is August 15^th, my parent’s birthday/federal holiday. The first one my mom has celebrated without my dad since she was 15 years old. Today, she turns 72, without him.

Mom is spending her birthday with her best friend Gloria and my family will celebrate my parents at my house this Sunday. She’s been dreading today, who wouldn’t? But it’s weird-- I’ve been praying about it and I just had this sense she was going to have incredible peace and joy today. She and Gloria will cook and bake and watch funny movies and I’m thinking about stopping by and surprising them with homemade macaroons.

We just got off the phone and the first thing she said was, “Oh Anna, I’ve been dreading today, but I have woken up with such peace and joy and love for your father. It really surpasses all understanding.”

Yes, it surpasses all understanding, but I get it. Because I have a deep sense of peace and joy too. It’s a miracle.

That’s why it’s a bit hard to accept. Our logical mind is confused. I’ve tried to vet it out, dig into it and unearth it like an archeologist who’s stumbled across an ancient artifact. And as I take my fine brush and wipe away the dirt and dust and tears, a realization has emerged: I am simply satisfied.

My dad’s work, as a God-given father, is complete.

I want for nothing from him. He gave me everything, and then some.

I feel sorrow from missing him. It’s deep and makes me weepy on a dime. But I am soulfully satisfied. And that satisfaction springs joy.

He was every bit the man I described in my eulogy. He came here and did what he was always meant to do, and his work here is done. Oh, I miss him. I want to laugh with him again, text him again, sit near him again and lean on his shoulder while we make fun of my brother’s gigantic head- again. But my needs have been met. I am full. And I am so deeply, I mean- soul deep - grateful, to have had him as my father.

I am acutely aware that many people, if not most people, are left wanting by their fathers. I do not take this privilege and this honor for granted. 

I have a friend who felt abandoned, and in many ways, unloved by his father, who was present but aloof. When his father passed, he didn’t leave his bed for three weeks. I thought it strange my grief wasn’t as physically debilitating since I was much closer to my dad.

But then I realized—my friend didn’t feel complete. His dad left before his rightful work as a father, was done. It’s a story with the wrong ending. It isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It just cuts off, unsatisfying because it’s unfinished. This is a suffering of a different stripe. And I have a deep compassion for those who have experienced it.

A suffering of which I was spared.

And the gratitude I encompass because of my sparing, has ripped the veil off mundane routine, petty offenses and superficial worries, leaving behind a beautiful, imperfect, but stunning life to live.

My mom senses this too. Just yesterday she said, “I feel like we’re suddenly more alive.” And what she meant is that we’re becoming more deeply in tune to our senses. The sound of my girl’s laughter hits deeper, our sobbing over my dad’s absence soothes rather than scrapes. We’re getting washed clean, almost overwhelmingly so, in a gratitude that is so good and pure, it’s downright jarring. The stunning insanity of nature will blow your mind if you just stop to see it. A hummingbird came to the window where I was washing dishes and stared at me, mid-air, for fifteen seconds. I had to go lie down.

I’m cooking and baking the most exciting foods, sipping on complex wines and drinking espresso in my delicate, gorgeous tea cups I never used because they were so expensive. I only walk in the most inspiring parks and stop abruptly to admire a wayward flower. Bike riders ring their bells and swerve. It’s fine.

I wear clothes around the house I used to only pull out when I wanted to impress somebody and I pour a pricy body oil onto my skin. The finality of life’s end is beyond devastating. But it also reminds us to live.

If you let it, of course.

Do you let it?

I want to let it.

You don’t truly know joy until you’ve known sorrow. Good until you’ve known bad. Love until you’ve known its absence. I can’t believe how much time I’ve wasted on the superficial until I was shocked, stunned by something real.

My sorrow for my dad will be with me always. And because joy is so intricately intertwined, I think it’s just beautiful.

I wish I could package this newfound perspective and give it away as a gift, but I fear we all have to experience it, and then embrace it, on our own. Some of you already have.

But some of us, tragically, will refuse.

Listen, I am under no illusion I will be spared bad, just horrible, days.

But I will not refuse joy. It is within me. It is all around me.

And it surpasses all understanding.