The death of a father can be devastating

For a person who grew up close to loving parents, the death of your father can be one of the hardest experiences you will face in life.

It's in the top four for intense and lasting grief-a beloved spouse, a child, a parent, or a sibling-are known to cause especially deep grief.

Oddly, I have not written about the death of my father before. Probably too sensitive even though a long time ago - almost 30 years.

Father had an approach that raised girls pretty much the same as boys. I had my brother Nic, only one year older, who was my buddy.

Dad taught us both how to fish, how to swim, row a boat, how to handle a .22 rifle, (but we never really shot anything, just practiced at the local gravel pit, gun safely, etc.). We did some tromping through the woods looking for partridge, but never found any. Spent a few early mornings out in a duck-blind in a row boat, behind reeds in the lake, eating cold fried egg sandwiches for breakfast. Didn't get any ducks, but had some 5 a.m adventures and togetherness.

Dad was not really a hunter or sportsman, but then it was expected that fathers do those things.

He did like to fish. So did I. We did a lot of fishing at grandpa's lake cabin on Gull Lake. Every summer weekend when I was young. I caught lots of fish.

It was post WWII up in northern Minnesota and people had guns for hunting. And grandfather had a little lake cabin on Gull Lake with a nice piece of shoreline, so we spent lots of time there.

Anyway, both my brother and I were raised in a similar fashion, and both were taught how to drive at 14.5 years old with a driver's learner-permit as they did then. Got our license on our birthdays at age 15. It was part of the 15th year birthday ritual. Dad was a flight instructor in WWII and an excellent and patient teacher. He made us pass the road test driving a straight-stick (gear shift) car, needed at the time. He gave us a lot of affection.

He also taught us to be loving and decent human beings, and showed us what a good father was.

At age 5 and 6 two more children came along. My sister Mary and brother Rex. I think they had a quite different growing up. When they were toddlers, the lake-place was sold. No fishing and jumping off the dock for them. By then, Mom and Dad were into golfing and we children spent our summer days in the local country club swimming pool. I learned to golf and was pretty good. But not so good as my mother who was a championship golfer.

Father did a lot to help me through my teenage and university years. Always supportive. But as I grew up to real adulthood he didn't always understand everything. So it is with parents and the generations.

But he did give me good advice in the years when I was in my 20s, including something that helped me years later when my dear husband died. He liked Baheej a lot but asked me: "You know he's older than you are. You'll have to deal with that some day. Do you think you can?" I was young, so of course I said, "Yes, I can." So now I'm dealing with it as I promised my father.

Young memories are very personal and very selective.

My dear husband Baheej lost his father when he was already here in graduate school. He got a letter saying his father had a bad heart attack two weeks earlier. And the next day another letter saying he died. They didn't want him to feel pressured to leave classes here in the USA and return to Nazareth for the funeral. Baheej wrote about the death of his father in a lovely way in his first published novel.

Baheej wrote, "The next day, and the next, and the next, I carry my father with me. Father telling me, I believe in you ..... Father keeping a smile of confidence on his face. Sitting under the shade of a mulberry tree, Father asking me to read to him to him when I was 8 years old and still stumbling over words, while he's listening with patience to a text read without comprehension. Father."

My own father died while I was on a business trip to Brazil. He died in the hospital from an anesthesia reaction after knee replacement surgery. He was only 80.

When I got home from Brazil, my dear husband Baheej gave me a card with a message explaining that father had died. I was devastated. It took me three years to figure out how to manage the grief. I did not "get over it," I don't mean that - I just learned how to cope. That's basically all one can do to deal with such a loss and the resulting long-term grief.

By now I've lost all my grandparents, my own parents, my brother Nic, and my sweet Baheej, all aunts and uncles, several friends. These pile up on the psyche. One must remain strong. Recently a reader wrote to me saying she's at the age where she has lost many and is anticipating more. It's true. Death is hard. Surviving is hard too.

Some practical actions you can take are:

• Get out some favorite photos of your father. Frame and put them where you can see them daily.

• Remember happy times together.

• Think of the good advice you got from your father over the years, and follow it.

• And sometimes you just need to find a person to talk to who is good listener and who is not family.

Sadly, most of us will outlive our fathers and we must use all the coping mechanisms we can muster to look to the future, and to live up to our father's expectations.

So the point is: Make an effort and get back into the land of the living-and make an effort to live for the future. I'm sure this is what our fathers would want.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a Ph.D. in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College, and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Ander

son-Kleif-Susan/.