Pops was the first man I ever loved and he will always have the biggest piece of my heart. He was the impossible standard that every other suitor would be held up against. I, like many young girls, was a total daddy’s girl. The sun rose when he woke up and set when he tucked me into bed at night. Even as I got older and our world views differed immensely, he was still my everything. To me, pops was everything I wanted to be and everything I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be as strong as him, but more open minded. I wanted to be as loving and compassionate as he was, but with less of a temper. Above all, I wanted to be my own person and not what I was supposed to be in the eyes of my family; he allowed me to be whoever I wanted, begrudgingly, but he let me. He watched me go from a baby to a young lady to a grown woman and cried every birthday because he was so proud of who I was and the women he had a hand in creating, and I was proud of him for letting his baby and only girl make her mark on the world the only way she knew how.

On May 23,surrounded by those he loved and listening to a recording of me reading him the letter I wrote him when I got my first tattoo, Pops peacefully passed on. Tired from fighting an eight-year battle with cancer, he, with the well wishes of my mother and I, allowed himself to let go. When I returned from my vacation that Friday, I was greeted with the news, and immediately surrounded by those I loved. In the short month that has passed since Pops has passed, I have learned a few things about the grieving processes and about myself.

It's okay to cry, and it's okay not to cry.

When I first found out about the passing of my beloved father, “Pops," I immediately fell apart. I was inconsolable and in denial, but as time went on, the tears became less and less until I had nothing left in me to cry. Once I stopped crying, I felt as though I was grieving “wrong” because I wasn’t able to shed tears. In a way, I went numb. I felt nothing and I wanted to feel nothing, but again I felt as though I was grieving incorrectly until someone made me realize that everyone grieves differently and my not being able to cry any longer did not mean that I loved my father any less.

We all grieve differently.

The thing about grieving is that everyone does it in their own way. I grieved by getting a new tattoo on my lower arm and a septum piercing. Getting new body art did two things for me; it made me feel more like myself than I had in a very long time, which I welcomed, and it cemented in my head that Pops was in fact gone. Pops would have never allowed me, no matter how old I was, to pierce my face and, to be honest, if he was here and saw my septum ring I would have had to run in fear of him ripping it out of my face. (I say this in jest.)

Sometimes it’s hard to go home, but you can always go home.

I know they always say home is where the heart is, and for me, that had always been true, but in a house I was never fond of, my parents were the only reason I stayed there, and now with Pops no longer with us, my home felt more like a shell of what it once was.

Sleep became a foreign concept to me because I couldn’t sleep without Pops in the house and I welcomed all distractions. Yet, at the end of the day, I always found myself yearning to go home and be where I felt safest. Maybe Pops was no longer there in the flesh, but I felt closest to him there.

No one can take the hurt and pain away…. let them try, anyway.

I am truly blessed with an amazing support system. From the very beginning, I was surrounded by those I loved both friends, family, and acquaintances. Everyone came out to make sure that my mother and I were well taken care of and never in need. After a while I tired of hearing the condolences, and I realize that this sounds insensitive, and maybe it is, but every condolence was a reminder of my loss. However, I started to realize that I was not the only person effected by the loss of my father and that those condolences soon turned into stories, memories and loving thoughts of what and who my father was. So many people not only wanted to share their love of Pops with me, but in a way they needed to share with me because that was their grieving process, and who was I to disallow that?

Above all, I have learned that no matter what, time goes on.

That hardest lesson learned was that time goes on. No matter the pain or the loss, time stands still for no one. My heart was so broken that a piece of me expected the whole world to stop turning because my world had stopped turning. Yet, no matter how hard I may had tried, I could not stop the minutes from ticking by. Before I knew it, a month had gone by, and I was a little wiser and a little more understanding, but still heartbroken nonetheless. They say time heals all wounds, but whoever said that obviously never experienced a broken heart.

Nonetheless, I will not dwell on the pain or hurt because I know Pops wouldn’t have wanted me to. I know he would have wanted me to push through it all and come out on the other side a better, stronger woman because that’s the type of woman he raised, and I can’t let him down now.