On October 11, my dad was in a terrible head-on car crash. He died on impact. The other driver— died an hour later. I have a hard time being human sometimes. This is one of those times.
My husband’s death—almost nine years ago—leveled me. It took years to climb out of that black hole, and I know there are still parts of me down there I’ll never retrieve. But this... this feels unbearable. My heart feels like it’s made of paper, and the universe keeps punching holes in it—so many that there are now more holes than heart left.
Is this the thing that finally breaks me? I keep asking myself. This might be it. This might finally be the one that does. I’ve sat down several times to write this—to make it into a cohesive expression of where I am. I hope it’s not too long because, damn it, if there’s one thing I know how to write about, it’s death.
Dacia
Death came into my life early. When my baby sister, Dacia, died just five days after she was born, I was three. I barely remember it in memory—but in feeling, I sure do. There are no pictures of the little girl my mother carried in her belly for nine months, but there was a hollowness that filled the house after. An empty space at the table where she should’ve been. An entire life never lived.
My mom tells me the story of how I reacted to her death. Apparently, I had a little yellow banana on wheels that I could sit on and roll around. His name was Ollie. I loved Ollie. He had two big black eyes, red yarn hair on top of his head, and four wheels that took him everywhere with me. When Dacia died, I told my mom I wanted to take Ollie to her grave—so she’d have something to play with in heaven.
I would have more encounters with death at nine, twelve, and thirteen, but none of those prepared me for the next big one at nineteen.
My Father
I need to go back for a minute and give a short backstory to a long story—the story of my father. We had a very complex relationship. What I posted on social media after he died pretty much sums it up:
Ronald Robert Drylie 12/13/51–10/11/2025.
This is my dad. He died unexpectedly in a car crash Saturday night.
We had a complicated relationship. He’s the one who named me Jolene. My mom wanted Holly Lynn. My sister—little at the time—suggested Peppermint Patty. But my dad trumped them all.
He taught me to love music. Ironically, he hated painting. And I’m probably tone-deaf—a little foreshadowing of the creative tension between us.
He had a hard time showing up for me consistently. He’s the reason I have a heartbeat—and the reason I’ve known heartbreak. His absence lit the fire that fueled me through a lifetime of creating and an incredibly successful 25-year career painting for movies, television, and live entertainment. Every painting, poem, and project screamed to him, I am here.
And now, he isn’t.
Life was hard on him. Hard on those who loved him. He served our country and was proud of it. He was the most musically gifted man I ever met. And when I buried my husband nine years ago, it was that music that helped me heal.
I don’t know the physics of black holes, but I’ve lived inside the ones carved by loss—the voids that drag you under and still pull at you long after you’ve crawled out, whispering their gravity as you search for light in a sky that’s forgotten how to shine.
Rest in peace, Ron Drylie. Earth school is hard. I’m glad you graduated.
Send me a signal from the void—something to keep writing about. Because all your stories ended today. I hope Patrick gives you hell... and a beer. I hope you both banter about the incredible force I am because of both the presence and absence of your love. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I most deeply and truly understand the force of loving someone who loves as hard as I do—because of both of you.
What I Didn’t Say
My father served in Vietnam, and like so many others, he came home carrying the war inside him. He didn’t leave it on the battlefield — he brought it into our house, into the walls, into the silence. He gave up irretrievable parts of himself for this country, and like too many veterans, he never got the help he needed — not mentally, physically, emotionally, or financially.
They were young men asked to bear things no one should have to carry, and when they came home, there was no soft place to land. They built lives on unsteady ground, raised families on top of old wounds, and tried to make sense of the noise still echoing in their heads.
My father was a musician, he could play most anything by ear on numerous instruments. Maybe he did this to drown out the noise in his own head. He was a storyteller in songs and on stage. He was a man I always tried to understand but I was a storyteller in paint and pen. The expressions were different but I also feel like we had a quiet understanding about the other.
My father taught me how to play a few keys of “Boogie Woogie” on my little kid piano at four years old. He also taught me to sing “Great Balls of Fire” at three. Of course, I had no idea what the song was about but every time I belted it out he would laugh so hard.
My parents split when I was five. He was in my life until I was about eleven. After that, I had two very significant “fill-in dads.”
The Stand-Ins
The first was Popa. In ninth grade, I met my best friend, and her family basically took me in as one of their own. Her dad was like my dad, and I called him Popa. Popa treated me like a daughter. I was at their house almost every day. Her family literally was my family. He showed up for me when my own father couldn’t.
In eleventh grade, we moved again, and I was separated from Popa. That’s when I met Jeff, my next father figure. My mom orchestrated the meeting. Jeff was a pastor at our church. She was worried about me because I was shut down, shut off, not talking to anyone about anything going on inside of me. Oh, and I was very angry.
Both Popa and Jeff made me feel safe. They talked to me, listened, encouraged me, and most of all, they loved me. They didn’t want anything from me. It was a new experience—and I needed it. I loved each of them as if they were my own father.
And then… they both died early.
The Pattern
When I was nineteen, Jeff was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was gone within three months. In my mid-twenties, Popa was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died, too. Years later, my husband was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died five months after his diagnosis. I was forty. Cancer sucks.
Jeff was the first corpse I ever saw. I walked up to his casket, looked at him, and laughed quietly to myself—because it didn’t look like him at all. I was nineteen, and even then, I knew what made him alive was his soul—and his soul wasn’t there.
I don’t remember seeing Popa in the casket. Maybe I blocked it out. Maybe it hurt too much. I just didn’t see the point in looking at people dead when the thing that made them them was already gone.
I was at my husband’s side in hospice when he took his last breath. I looked up at my brother and asked, “What time is it?” He said, “9:47.” I whispered back. “An entire man’s life reduced to a number.”
I felt disconnected from death, as if it didn’t exist. And sometimes, in those moments, it felt like neither did I.
Aftermath
On Sunday, October 12th, I didn’t get out of bed until 4 p.m.—and even then, I didn’t want to. I tried to process that my dad was dead. On Monday, October 13th, I woke up and got ready for work. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and said, “What am I doing? Going to work? I guess I just don’t know what to do with myself.”
At 11:30 a.m., I got a text. I was told his face was “still viewable,” and if I wanted, I could come and pay my respects before the cremation. My dad didn’t want a service. He just wanted to be cremated. I left work and made the hour-and-a-half drive to the funeral home.
I saw his body in the processing room. His hair—wild and unruly like his spirit—spilled across the pillow. And I said, “We tried, Dad. We really did. I’m sorry we could never get it together. I know we both wanted too.” Then I left and made the long drive home.
The Shape of Grief
Grief is a wild ride. I’ve come to think it’s like snowflakes or fingerprints—no two are the same. Each one mirrors the soul of the person you lost.
This grief feels different. With my husband, I was grieving the good—the life we built, the future we planned but would never live. With my father, I grieve the never was. The man who gave me life but never a home. The memories we never had. The future I could never picture with him in it. Still, I want our souls to be at peace with each other—as much as we can be.
The Storm
As I said, it’s not death that scares me—it’s how I keep finding ways to live through it. And maybe that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it doesn’t have to.
I’ll navigate these layered, complicated waters like I always have. I’ll look up at the sky and realize I’m in the eye of the storm — only to know, in my heart, I am the storm. This is my sea. And I can only ever save myself.
How do I know?
Because when the sea finally settles, you’re left staring at the wreckage of who you were. You pull the shrapnel from the tide and piece together what’s left — whatever fragments you can find — and you keep going.
The story that follows is where I first learned how to build something from that wreckage. I never published it — until now. Maybe it will help someone else find their way back, too.
30 Alternate Routes
Sometimes the only way forward is through the wreckage you thought would finish you. This isn’t a story about dying — it’s about learning how to live when you almost didn’t.
