There’s a sad reality to Father’s Day

There’s a sad Aussie reality that most people don’t want to talk about – but it needs to be discussed.

Mary lost her Dad just this year. Picture: News.com.au

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When you break-up with someone, the solution is that you block them on Instagram because you know seeing their posts will make you feel sad.

It’s a simple and effective solution but it doesn’t work with grief.

I’m preparing for my first Father’s Day without my beloved dad, and it’s social media I keep thinking about.

For the most part, I’m an adult, and I can block out Father’s Day. It’s pretty easy to do when you don’t have a dad to celebrate.

But there’s the odd weak spot.

I recently found myself crying at the shopping centre because I was confronted by a pile of Darrell Lea Dad’s Bags, but I can block it out.

I can try and move on, and I know he’d want me to surge forward.

Mary lost her Dad just this year. Picture: News.com.au

Yet I know that come Sunday, social media will remind me of everything I no longer have. The only thing I can relate to is when you see a group of your friends all hanging out without you on social media.

You get that sick feeling in your gut but in this case I get hit with a dose of cruel grief.

I know on Father’s Day people will post throwback photos on Instagram with their dad. There will be people posting silly videos of their dads, and there will be group family shots huddled around a table.

Their lives will look fun, full and like nothing is missing.

They aren’t the kind of people that have to remind themselves to say “Mum’s house” instead of “parents’ house” because they only have a mum now.

They don’t know what it is like to lose someone and still have to somehow keep finding yourself and also do the laundry.

When something happens they don’t have to try and think what their dad would have said about it – they can just ring their dads.

They get their dads and all the celebrating that comes with it.

Father’s Day is a hard day for lots of Aussies. Picture: Istock

You know what I get? Awkward conversations and a void that I don’t think I can fill again.

When my family gather around a table now, there’s an empty chair that is confronting for all of us. When we sit down now, a person is missing.

There’s a spot where my dad would sit. He’d drink red wine, read the paper and usually offend one of us.

Now it’s empty.

We can change the seating arrangements a million times in a never-ending game of grief musical chairs, but the spot is still there.

The answer is to avoid social media, but in this day and age that answer seems silly, like telling a Millennial not to buy coffee.

Social media is just part of our daily lives, and there’s no doubt I’ll end up doom-scrolling at some point and know it will hurt.

Psychologist Carly Dober said that landmark days are hard because they bring “full attention” to the fact you’ve lost someone you love.

“The visuals when you walk into shopping centres or grocery stores and see cards or posters about the day, the hashtags on social media, and people around you talking generally more about what they might do to celebrate their fathers on the day can make this loss more apparent than it usually is,” she said.

There's now an empty seat at our table. Picture: Istock via PeopleImages

Dober also said that it can trigger many emotions like “sadness, jealousy, loneliness and resentment”.

She also explained that it is very “difficult” to ask people to stay off social media, especially if it’s a landmark day that suddenly is “emptier”.

Instead, she recommends having a strategy around social media for the day. Nothing drastic, try and set yourself some limits.

“Put in some time boundaries where you say you’re only checking social media for 10 or 15 minutes, and then you’ll go for a walk or watch a film,” she recommended.

Dober also said that it is essential to “remind yourself” that social media is deceiving even at the best of times.

“Social media is always curated; people typically show the highlight reel. A photo and a caption from someone might not paint a holistic picture of their relationship with their fathers which might also be very complicated.”

Originally published as There’s a sad reality to Father’s Day