The Weight We Carry

When I lost my father in 2004, I lost more than the man who had been my father.

I lost the future I thought we would have together.

That, for me, has always been one of the hardest parts of grief.

I knew he would not be there forever. None of us are. But I never imagined all the things he would miss.

He would never see my babies grow up. He would never see them graduate from college, fall in love, get married, or have children of their own. He would never hold the grandchildren that came from the children he had watched me raise.

There are so many moments in life when I have thought, I wish Dad could see this. More moments and you would know…

That is the horrific part of losing someone we love that people don’t always talk about. We don’t just lose yesterday. We lose all the tomorrows we thought we were going to share.

And my father has never really been far away from my life, even after his death.

In some ways, that is because of the legacy he left me.

The tea business has carried his name, his story, and his memory forward for decades. I talk about my father because his life is part of the story of what I do. I tell people about him, I talk about what he taught me, and I share the legacy he left behind.

So while many people eventually have the opportunity to put some distance between themselves and their grief, I never really had that luxury.

My work constantly brings me back to him.

Sometimes that has been a blessing. Sometimes it has been painful.

Because remembering someone you love can be both things at the same time.

For a long time, I thought moving on meant somehow leaving my father behind.

I eventually learned that it doesn’t.

Moving on means learning how to carry someone differently.

There is an old lesson about grief that has always stayed with me.

Imagine holding a glass of water with your arm stretched straight out in front of you.

At first, it isn’t difficult.

Hold it for an hour, though, and your arm begins to ache. Hold it all day, and the pain becomes almost unbearable.

But here’s the strange thing:

The glass hasn’t become any heavier.

The water hasn’t changed.

You haven’t become any weaker.

It is simply the length of time you have been carrying it that makes the weight feel so great.

Grief can be like that.

The loss doesn’t necessarily become heavier. We simply become exhausted from carrying it.

And sometimes we have to learn that putting the weight down for a while isn’t forgetting the person we lost.

It is learning how to live again.

My father taught me something about that long before I understood how much I would need it.

There is a simple story about a man who falls into a deep hole and cannot get himself out.

A doctor walks by, and the man cries out, “Please help me.”

The doctor writes him a prescription and walks away.

A priest comes by. Again, the man calls for help.

The priest tells him he will pray for him and continues on his way.

Then the man’s father comes walking by.

“Dad, I can’t believe it’s you,” the man says. “I’ve fallen into this hole and I can’t get out.”

Without hesitation, his father jumps into the hole.

The son looks at him and says, “Dad, now we’re both stuck.”

His father smiles and says, “No, Raymond. I’ve been in this hole before, and I know the way out.”

That is what a father does.

He doesn’t always prevent you from falling.

Sometimes he teaches you how to get back up.

And even after he is gone, the lessons remain.

I have fallen into that hole many times since my father died.

There have been moments when I have felt the weight of his absence, the things he never saw, and the conversations we never had.

But somewhere inside me, I can still hear him saying:

“As long as I’m around, I’ll always be here to help you.”

He isn’t here in the way I wish he were.

He can’t watch my children grow.

He can’t hold my grandchildren.

He can’t sit across from me and tell me what he thinks.

But he is still here—in the lessons he gave me, in the way I try to live, in the family he helped shape, and in the legacy I continue to carry.

I never wanted to forget how it felt the day I lost my father.

But I also couldn’t spend the rest of my life standing still in that day.

There comes a time when we have to put the weight down.

Not because we love them less.

But because they would want us to keep living.

Perhaps that is the greatest gift we can give those we have lost:

To take what they gave us and carry it forward.

Not their absence.

Their love.

Never surrender.