Grief

When you lose someone you love, in the beginning, the grief is so raw and overwhelming that your life is filled with it.  After losing my sister, my every waking moment was consumed by my grief.  She was all I could think about and my pain was all I could feel.  Thankfully, this intense and overwhelming grief eases with time and gradually your pain is not so sharp.  It is replaced by a duller but deeper pain that stays with you, maybe forever, I don’t know.  I do know that in time, I was able to think about other things in my life.  This process is so gradual that you hardly notice it.  At first these other thoughts were fleeting, hardly occurring before they would fade and my grief would re-emerge in full force.  These thoughts felt like an intrusion.  I wanted to feel my grief; my sister deserved nothing less and it was the last thing that I could give her. -  My grief is an expression of my love for her and all that she meant in my life.  How can I let go of it?  It’s all I have left. -  Soon though, your life begins to resurface more frequently and it stays for longer periods.  Some days even feel almost normal and slowly those days spread out into a week and a week turns into weeks.  This is healing.  I was and still am afraid of healing.  This fear exists on so many levels that I can only attempt to understand it.  When you lose a loved one, you lose more than just their physical presence in your life.  You lose a part of your past and the part of your future they would have occupied in your life.  This is an indistinct loss and hard to define.  My sister took with her memories that I shared with her alone, memories of us and our life together.  She took secrets that I shared with no one but her, rituals that existed only between us.  She took with her the unique and deeply fulfilling relationship that was our sisterhood.  We were knotted together by that relationship and my life has been profoundly and forever changed by her death.  We will never celebrate our future triumphs or mourn our losses together.  She will not see my children grow up, she will miss my college graduation, and I will never know her as an old woman.  This is my grief and how do I live with it?  Yet, how do I let it go?  I’ve already lost so much, how can I let go of the pain that gives her memory substance and keeps my memories fresh?  More loss, that is what healing can feel like.  It is not the relief that one might think.  But I’ve also learned that grief is tricky.  It really does sneak up on you at the least expected moments.  I can have three good days where my sorrow is felt only under the surface.  I will think about her and still be able to breathe and live, but then I can be sitting at my desk at work and suddenly I am filled with such an overwhelming sense of loss that I have to run to the bathroom and lock myself in to hide my tears.  Moments like these can be brought on by a memory of a smell or a song, or they can be brought on by nothing at all.  They sneak; they knock you down with their force and leave you emotionally drained.  Yet, I have to embrace them when they come.  I feel relief because it means that I haven’t forgotten her.  I’m not ready to let go of my pain.  I still need it to cope with my loss, but each day I get closer and I know that sometime in the future I will be able to remember my sister with all of the love and joy that she gave me in life and without the pain that I feel now.  That will be my final tribute to the life we shared together as sisters.  I love you Bev and miss you every moment of my life.