Still Here
On losing, on grief, and on what it means to still be standing.
I woke up this morning and went outside.
That is the whole story, really. I woke up, and I went outside.
The cucumbers are climbing their cages.
The strawberries are blooming, small white flowers opening in the early sun.
Seedlings I planted just days ago are already breaking through the soil, tiny and insistent, knowing nothing about what happened in a meeting room in West Chester last night.
They just grow. That is what they do.
I lost. The vote was 108 to 195. We built a full slate, a detailed platform, and reached every committee member we could find in less than a week, with no institutional support, against a team that had months of preparation and supporters with a printing budget for hit pieces hung above urinals. I lost anyway. And Wednesday morning I woke up, and I went outside.
Sunday will be one year since my father died.
Our relationship was complicated, the way relationships are when a difficult teenager and a man carrying a war inside him find themselves in the same house. He was a Vietnam veteran. He didn't find his people until later in life. The veteran community arrived for him, or he for it, and that finding changed everything.
He gave the last twenty years of his life to VFW Butler-O'Connor-McCormick Post 106 here in West Chester. Over those years he served in every position the post had to offer, working his way through the ranks and serving as commander, possibly more than once. But more than any title, he was the operational backbone of that organization, the person who kept things running, who showed up and did the unglamorous work that makes a community function. He found in that building what I think he had been looking for a long time: a place where people understood what he carried without him having to explain it.
He died on June 28, 2025. One month from diagnosis to hospice. Cancer that came suddenly and consumed everything. We were not ready. I don't think you ever are.
Grief has a way of sending you searching. I am adopted. When my father got sick, I found myself going deeper into my birth family's history, looking for something I couldn't name. What I found was more than I expected, and more than I deserved, in the best possible way.
I descend from people who reportedly crossed the Delaware on a frozen Christmas Eve with no guarantee of what waited on the other side. That is not metaphor. It is genealogy. My great-grandfather many times over wintered at Valley Forge, and his powder horn, given to him by Washington himself, is currently on loan to the National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, part of a special exhibit marking the 250th anniversary of the Revolution he helped fight. It's not sitting quietly in a case. It's been called up for duty. Someone showed me that lineage in 2021, thinking it would shake me. Instead it explained everything.
The rebellious streak. The refusal to go quiet. The ability to take a hit and show up the next morning.
None of that is new. It is inherited.
I have been sitting with something else this week, something that sounds strange but feels absolutely true. Sunday is four days away. One year since I lost him. And I wonder sometimes if he knew. If somewhere in whatever comes after this life, he saw the anniversary approaching and knew his daughter's heart would be raw and open and vulnerable, and so he did what fathers do. He triggered my injustice reflex. He sent me on a warrior's mission. He made sure I was too busy fighting to fall apart.
If that is what happened, it worked. I spent the week he died building something instead of grieving. I stood in a room on Tuesday night, gave a speech in front of hundreds of people, many of them openly hostile, and took 108 votes against people who had every institutional advantage. And now it is Wednesday morning and Sunday is coming and my heart is still whole.
Maybe that was the point.
There is another piece written. A different one, about everything that happened this week, in full. I am choosing not to publish it today, in the hope that the calls for unity from the top of the winning slate were sincere, and that we can find a real way forward together. That hope is genuine. So is the piece.
For now, this morning, I am feeding the birds and watering the plants and watching things bloom. The cucumbers don't know about Tuesday. The strawberries don't know about the proxies or the hit piece or the people who called me entitled, my personal favorite, at the end of a long night. They just bloom.
I am trying to be more like them.
Sunday is coming. My father found his people late and gave them everything he had. I understand that better now than I ever did when he was alive.
I am still here. Still outside. Still watching things grow.
That is enough for today.
To the veterans of VFW Post 106 in West Chester: thank you for giving my father a place to belong. It mattered more than you know.
Your writing popped up on my feed, most likely because I have been using this Substack as reflections of my mind that seem to have a lot of loss within- I recently wrote about the passing of my father too. It was also abrupt, no warning which is the biggest shock heartbreak I have had aside from a recent loss of my 15 yr old cat.
My cat, his name was Guy is my longest relationship to date. His name seems fitting. It’s actually short for Gaius which means “happy” and is Julius Ceasars first name for what it’s worth.
Life. Death. The transition for those still standing are the hardest part.
I adore your gardening photos. I have been doing the same as you; channeling grief into a bloom 🌼
Many hugs from myself to you,
Tera
That is enough for today, Ada! I know your Father is proud.
Unity does need to be given every opportunity. Appreciate your wisdom there. Our opponents want us divided. It can't happen. Forward together!!!