A friend of mine died on Halloween of stage four Pancreatic cancer. I would say were were friends, but we weren't particularly close. He has a daughter who is about the age my brother was when our father died. Around 12. It breaks my heart. I know what it is like and I know what a burden it is to carry that kind of grief around with you. It doesn't go away.

People say that over time it "gets better."

It doesn't. It is always there, especially when you experience that sort of thing when you are so young. From now on every time she goes on a date with a boy no one will be around to interrogate him, not like her dad would have done. Her father will not be there for her when she graduates from high school or college. He will not be there to witness all of the milestones in between. He won't walk her down the aisle when she gets married. He won't be there when she has her first child. She will miss out on all of those things and all of the happiest moments of her life will be tainted knowing that he should be there to give her a hug and tell her how much she is loved.

Halloween is ruined. So is pretty much every Holiday for the next few years (At least, it could be much longer.)

I will say, from my own experience, that it does get more bearable. I think of my father every day, but now, to paraphrase David Lindsay-Abaire, "the pain is what you have instead." The grief that I carry for my father is what I have, it is all that I get and I have to be thankful for that.

This post was initially supposed to be about my friend's death and the Facebook responses, but I got distracted. Maybe another time.