Why I Had to Lose: A Journey on Living with Loss and Honoring your Grief​

By Teeanna Isaac

When your entire world is shattered due to extreme loss, the only thing you can hold on to now is your memories. You look for connectivity and alignment with others through your grieving process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Teeanna Isaac
• Release date: Nov 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798985116908

Book preview

Chapter 1

Honoring Clifford Isaac

Honoring Clifford Isaac Jr

This will not be a story about a dead Dad or the perils of losing a parent extremely early in life. I would like for this book to act as a vessel for my father’s life that was cut extremely short, and for him to live on through the imaginations of the potential readers of this book. He is not just a dead man, he was a son, a brother, a husband, and an incredible father.

My dad was born on September 30, 1970, the only boy with four sisters in San Antonio, Texas. My papa, who is my dad’s dad, wasn’t able to speak about the loss of his only son, being that he feared the words weren’t ready to leave his body. He provided images and letters my dad had sent him that allow you to feel the unbreakable love they shared.

My mother and father met in the summer of 1991 through a friend named Kevin who invited her to hang out with him and a guy named Cliff from Los Angeles California. My mother, who was seventeen at the time and was currently also dating someone, attended the party with my eldest sister Camile in tow. At the party Kevin calls Cliff thinking they would get along nicely and hands my mother the phone, my dad jokingly telling her, You sound like you look good, just wait there until I get there. Intrigued by the confidence in his tone my mother stays and is met by a man with a long shag, dressed in a white T-shirt, khaki pants, and Nike Cortez. She was smitten by initial attraction and as the night went on, she got to know him and liked what she saw. My mother ended up staying at Kevin’s house with my dad for three nights straight. When she returned home, she was not only faced with the decision to break up with her current boyfriend but also with the judgments of the family who felt he was a better suitor.

That same night she received a call from my dad and he asked, When am I going to see you again? She goes back the following day and stays for a week, and from thenceforward she realized this was her person. My dad worked minute jobs and didn’t have the best reputation, so my grandparents were less than thrilled to see her move on to this new relationship.

Their relationship wasn’t perfect. They didn’t have lots of money and were struggling with commitment issues as well as simply being teenagers themselves.

A few months later my mother finds out she is pregnant with my brother Terrell, and they begin living together in secret. My dad got into legal troubles, and they experienced times where the issues would separate them.

It wasn’t until she was pregnant with her third child Carisha that my dad decided he wanted to transform his life and focus on being a great father and a provider for his family. My grandfather goes to visit them, he realizes the door was unlocked and discovers my dad’s belongings there and a positive pregnancy test. He calls my mother, and she is forced to come clean about her relationship with my dad and that they are a family.

One day when she’s already big and pregnant with Carisha my dad asks my mother if she wants to go and eat and while having dinner he asks about her thoughts on marriage—it being something she hadn’t thought of or intrigued her. My dad suggests let’s go and get married and they go to the courthouse without telling a soul and within an hour or so they were married.

The next day my great grandmother Elsie calls the family and says she saw that Cliff and Tina were married in the San Antonio Newspaper. At that time, my mom worked for a luxury hotel and my dad worked a few doors down at Jim’s Diner as a busboy. A few months later my mother realizes that hospitality is her passion and coming to that realization it compels her to ask my dad what is his?

He hadn’t thought about it yet but soon after a friend introduced him to the air conditioning and heating business. My dad signed up for trade school and discovered that this was indeed his passion. My mother was responsible for being the primary breadwinner until he was able to complete school and gain his certificate.

In Texas, we had a home and pets and were stable. One Saturday day my dad wanting a fresh start tells my mom we are moving to California by the weekend. My mom begins making the arrangements for her job at Pacific Care to be transferred and by the weekend off we went. All piled into a van we drove 1,762 miles from San Antonio to Hollywood where we spent the first few weeks living with my papa.

When I came into my dad’s life that young and wild boy had completely transformed into a hardworking family man. He was as much of a real Dad as it can get. He worked extremely hard, he fixed air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines—you name it he could fix it. He was infatuated with enormously large fish tanks filled with extremely large fish. He had a gleam in his eyes when he would look through the glass of his fish tanks, always clean and filled with several types of fish from algae eaters to oscars. He really loved animals, he loved all our dogs through the years, and it was so precious to see such a big man that would light up when our tiny teacup chihuahuas would just be happy he was finally home.

He was an extremely knowledgeable man; he was not college-educated being that he went to trade school, but he was very smart and made sure to educate himself on topics before speaking about them. He mainly watched the news and listened to talk radio, he knew a lot about politics and was eager to teach anyone who would listen. He was a kind and patient man—well with me and maybe only me and the people he loved.

He loved to bang pots together on New Year’s Eve, he loved to come up with freestyle raps late at night at the dinner table. He was a huge Al Green fan and could belt out every single one of his songs word for word, occasionally pausing to make sure to tell us we don’t know anything about this.

He loved to fish, he bought me a pink chrome fishing rod from Kmart so we could go to Castaic Lake together where I would never actually catch one fish.

He was an extremely good cook. Anyone who has ever tasted my mom’s cooking swears she’s the best cook they have ever met, and I always think to myself how impressed they would be if my dad were alive to cook for them. He would make his famous Smiley burgers with a Heineken in hand and would bask in the compliments from everyone he invited over to enjoy them. He would always joke about how rich he would be if he started selling his burgers and they were so good, he was probably right.

He was an extremely confident man that would stare at himself in mirrors and exhale, I look good but always had that slight insecurity because of his acne scars and was determined to try any fix to clear them. I was so used to them they went completely unnoticed. He would be the first to remind you that he was Indian and that’s why his hair was so straight and black.

His wardrobe consisted mainly of oversized white tees and plaid picnic basket shorts, accessorized with a watch, white socks and Nike Cortez. Hats were only for weekends of course because throughout the week he only wore his work uniform and construction boots that he would have laid out in preparation for the next day. He always seemed prepared until he would make a spectacle the next morning about the missing keys or wallet that he’s convinced one of us had touched that he would eventually find I’m assuming where he left it.

My dad was a funny man. I mean everyone in my immediate family is funny being that we all had to keep up with each other’s wit. But my dad was hilarious in a way where his jokes might take a second but once you understood it you were on the floor laughing.

One day out of the blue he showed up with a silver keyboard that got on our nerves because he would play the same two keys over and over. When he eventually learned that it had the capability of making beats, he would spend hours coming up with raps and songs that he swore high and low his friends stole and sold to a record company.

His love for animals was clear when you realized we were a family of six in a two-bedroom apartment with two yellow canaries, several fish and a dog. When one of the pets would die, he would be heartbroken and angry and as personal as I took it at the time, I realize now he was just passionate about animals and the innocence of their lives.

He loved to talk. Every night he would get on a soapbox and talk until either he tired himself out or until he looked around and everyone had retired to their rooms. I loved to listen to him and a lot of what he was saying I use now in my everyday life. Anyone close to me knows me to say, My dad said … or My dad always told me … He loved to teach me things, I think because I was such an intrigued audience member. He taught me the technology of a refrigerator one night and I was actually taking notes as if one day this was going to be on a test.

He lit up any room he walked into with the biggest smile and the warmest loudest laugh. He had the largest hands I’ve ever seen and looking at mine you would know they run in the family. He was stern at times and didn’t tolerate a lot of mess. He liked order and giving out chores just as much as he liked to have fun and party.

He worked for many companies including Sears and A&E. He had been working for other companies for so long that toward the end of life he had filed for an LLC and finally was able to start his own business called Cliff Air. His certificate of business hung proudly in our home even years after his passing. He had business cards printed and invested in a van that he planned to get his logo plastered across. He was a hardworking diligent man that always knew there was more to