I lost my dad in 2012 – I envy people who are grieving today

I don’t often cry while flipping TikTokbut about a week ago I was struck by a girl’s video of her and her dad.

Her dad had one similar to mine died of a brain tumor after being fit and healthy all my life. The girl has put together footage of them laughing together as they renovate her first home, chipping away at old tiles, ripping up carpets and sharing celebratory high-fives every step of the way.

I couldn’t help but feel devastated by how beautiful this snapshot of their life together was.

It always amazes me how much life comes out of these videos because they capture those intimate, private, everyday moments that you end up missing the most. Sharing space with a loved one, enjoying their company, laughing at nothing and celebrating small victories.

Like in the late 20s who lost her dad at 16, this isn’t the first time GriefTok has infiltrated my For You page. It gives me great comfort to know that I am not alone in my grief and that there are people who understand the deep, dark, confusing emotions that can make you feel so isolated.

But I also feel a little lost with the quality of these videos and photos.

Back in 2012, when Blackberry were still in fashion and iPhone 5s were still weighing down coat pockets, my dad was diagnosed with the most aggressive form of brain tumor: glioblastoma.

Google even called it The Terminator, so honestly it was a blessing that my dad had a sense of humor about the news.

For the next 10 months, my family and I spent all our time together, trying to savor every moment and capture it in time, capturing it on our phone and digital camera. In the end, we knew that all we would have left of Dad were our memories and our photos.

We documented everything; time at the hospice, time at the beach, long walks with the dogflipping pancakes, singing in the kitchen, but mostly it was photos – a snapshot of these moments before my dad passed away in May 2013.

Luckily, my parents loved home video, but those grainy, hazy views of Christmas mornings or summer vacations in the early 2000s are nothing compared to the quality of footage today.

Earlier this year, when I lost two of my closest family friends, Norma and Angie, whom I had known since birth and were practically family, I was struck by how different to miss in the age of digital technologies.

When I inevitably missed them, especially in the first few weeks, I had a huge archive of videos and voicemails and photos to scroll through.

I would have listened to a recent voicemail from Norma or watched a video of us all playing games at the Christmas table just a few weeks before she died.

All of this is tinged with painful poignancy, but I found such comfort in replaying these snippets of our time together. I didn’t need to memorize what her voice sounded like, the melody of her laugh, or how her face moved when she smiled because there were so many different angles in front of me.

Sure, Norma and Angie are still frozen in time, but it’s so much more than a single shot of them; it is an animated fragment of their life. They look and feel as alive as I remember them.

For the first time, I began to feel a pang of jealousy for people who miss their parents in the digital age, because they unconsciously memorized the most precious memories and created a time capsule spent with their parents or loved ones. .

I desperately wish I had more videos of my dad laughing, hugging me, talking to me, being silly as always. I have three, maybe four, iPhone 5-quality videos, as well as some recovered camcorder footage, that offer a blurry view of my childhood.

I have watched all of them thousands of times, I could recite them practically by heart.

I am thankful that I was an avid photographer even before Dad was diagnosed. As a designated family documentarian, some of my dad’s best photos – the ones that show the wrinkles on his forehead, the different shades of his eyes, and the endless joy in his smile between laughs – were taken by me.

But video is completely different.

It’s not about having something to post on social networks, but about seeing more and remembering who this person was during his lifetime.

With the advent of TikTok, we’re more used to making videos of anything than ever, and it’s never been easier to shoot something high-quality from your phone.

Since I moved back in with my mom during the pandemic, I have tons of videos with her. Baking, dancing, singing, laughing, kicking back and bingeing on Netflix’s latest crime drama, each clip makes me glow every time I watch it.

I wish I could have the same for my dad as I know how precious the videos I have are to me. It pains me that I didn’t have this opportunity to document my dad in this way, as I know it would have been such a comfort to my grief, even after all these years.

I never could have imagined how much I would want his life to be made into a movie, but it is such a special way to stay connected to a loved one when they are gone.

Even if you’re offline all the time, document everything on your phone. Take it from someone who doesn’t have an archive of HD videos of their loved one laughing, but studies the lines of their face in old photos while my mind fills in the gaps of their voices and mannerisms.

Film your loved ones doing anything or just doing nothing. Laughing in front of the TV, hugging your dog as one day it will be all you have left and you will cherish it more than I can express.

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