Emer McLysaght: I’m absolutely furious at my dad for going and dying

Fifty years ago my parents got married in a little church in Fermanagh. Today is their golden wedding anniversary. However, 13 years ago my dad died, so he's missing it.

We’d probably have a party if he was still here. A gathering at least. A dinner with those once-in-a-blue-moon relatives or a surprise in the garden with a gazebo and people parking on the good grass. Instead, I’m trying to imagine us all in the gazebo, struggling to comprehend how my mother must be feeling and wondering, always wondering, what it would have been like if he hadn’t bloody died.

After 13 years, though, I find it's less about being sad and more about investigating how furious I am that he died in the first place

It’s not his fault he died. He had metastatic lung cancer which, admittedly, was likely linked to the dedication to smoking for about 35 years of his life. But he gave up the cigs when he was 50, which was a gargantuan effort. It was too late though. By his mid-50s he had lung cancer and he died a few months after his 60th birthday – a cautionary tale for anyone dithering over giving them up if ever I heard one.

We knew he was dying and I was dreading, dreading, dreading the funeral the most. Being on show and the sad handshakes and the macabre spectacle of the coffin being lowered into the ground. Please, when I go, light me on fire. Somehow the worms will learn to cope.

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It didn’t stop with the funeral though. That was just the start.

Every anniversary and occasion is an opportunity to remember and miss him. He’s missed my 30th birthday, my 40th, Mam’s 70th, his 70th, the publication of my first book, the birth of his two youngest grandchildren, as well as all of my brothers’ milestones.

After 13 years, though, I find it’s less about being sad and more about investigating how furious I am that he died in the first place and fantasising about how things could have been different.

My daydreams involve bringing him back from the dead like an evil twin in a dreadful soap opera except in the daydreams he isn’t evil, he’s just living his best jolly dad and grandad life. He’s enjoying retirement with Mam and tinkering with my wiper fluid and pressing on a creaky floor in my flat and saying, “Was that always like that, was it?”

I imagine us as stock images, laughing into our glasses of wine while admiring a flower bed or trying out a mobility aid for men in their twilight years with bad knees.

I don't recall experiencing any of the other stages of grief and if I'm only getting on to anger now, I'm really dragging my feet

I’m selfishly raging at how I feel his absence has altered my life in ways I struggle to come to terms with. I’m blaming him for bad decisions I’ve made, for experiences I’ve missed, for responsibilities I didn’t ask for. I’ve foolishly built a version of a world with him in it in which everything is perfect, including me. I’ve constructed a narrative in which we’re best friends.

I was about 23 when he first got sick and 27 when he died, and I’d like to think that after the Difficulty Teenage Years and the mild parental coddling of my early 20s, we would have developed into proper pals. I’m apoplectic that it never happened. I had only just come to terms with the idea that him wearing his slippers down to the local shop was funny rather than mortifying. I was growing so much and then he upped and died!

I’m fuming at hypothetical do-gooders who might say, “This is totally normal. Anger is one of the stages of grief.” I know you mean well, imaginary Siobhan, but grief seems like one of the most nebulous things going. Everyone experiences it differently, anything can be attributed to it and they say it can last anywhere from six months to the whole rest of your life.

I don’t recall experiencing any of the other stages of grief and if I’m only getting on to anger now, I’m really dragging my feet. According to Google, I still have bargaining, depression and acceptance to get through and it’s already been 13 years.

My dear friend Sophie White wrote about grief after the death of her father so beautifully in her book Corpsing. She said, "There is no cure, no respite from the grief. You cannot edit it, you cannot deny it, you cannot go around it: the only way out is through." Okay Sophie, I think to myself, and maybe even text her to ask the question: but how do you know you're going through it? Maybe there's a more in-depth list than the denial, anger, bargaining, etc one? Is there any list that takes all my experiences from the past 13 years and marks each one down as a stage of grief and reassures me that I'm not a terrible person for being so consumed with self-pity and resentment? Thanks.

My Googling on the issue reassures me that there’s a recognised state called “secondary grief” which acknowledges the knock-on effects the death of a someone close to you can have on your life – be they financial, social, in relationships or in your career.

There’s no specific mention of “fuming about how poxy it is to be left to pick up the pieces and specifically being angry at the conspicuous absence of a golden wedding anniversary party with an ostentatious catered bar and enough ice for everyone who wants it”, but it’s definitely implied.