When someone important passes away the void they leave behind in our lives can be hard to fill. We never stop missing the ones we love and have lost, and we all deal with it in different ways.
For Rax King, who lost her father too soon, she dealt with her grief by sometimes sending emails to her dad’s old work address whenever she needed what she calls “ghost advice”. If that’s not the best name for it, I don’t know what is.
She couldn’t believe it when one day she got a response…
An email came back from the address, not written by her father, but by one of his colleagues who knew and remembered Rax.
She was surprised by the moving message, in which her father’s old colleague recounted memories of seeing he and Rax together. He reminisced about their wisecracking, razzing, and cursing at each other. He commented on how close they were, and even said it was clear they were cut from the same cloth. Is there a greater compliment than that?
He assured her that she was not alone in missing her father, and that he had touched the lives of the people around him, and that the connection she shared with him was special.
After Rax posted the email response to her Twitter account, Other users flooded in with condolences and their own personal experiences.
Some were empathetic to her loss (definitely no one cried).
Same, same.
My makeup is just fine…*sniff*.
I don’t know what she means at all…
Some people could relate and shared their own experiences of how they communicate with their dads and other loved ones even after they’ve passed.
Sending a message to a lost loved one can be cathartic.
Many people write texts, social media messages, emails, and hand-written letters to friends and/or family that have passed away. If you’ve ever done this, or know someone who has, you may have wondered if it was unhealthy or worried it might not be “normal”, but it’s a very common way for many people to grieve.
Teen Vogue explains in an article that speaking to a dead loved one can be a great coping mechanism, and is even suggested by professional counsellors and therapists. It was even more cathartic for Rax that she was able to share her experience with the twitterverse.
Rax was touched by how many people responded to her experience, and tweeted a photo of her young Dad in memoriam, looking cool as they come.
Twitter users didn’t miss the opportunity to draw celebrity comparisons
“Did not realize your dad was Nicholas Cage.” – @j_zimms
“Oh wow, he looks like Nicholas Cage, if he was cast in a movie about Timothy Leary.” – @Lesbeansidhe
“Your Dad is Javier Bardem?” – @2muchseb
It’s nice that Rax’s emails and the heart warming response she got from her father’s old colleague was felt by so many people around the world! Would you write to a lost loved one?
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