The Feeling of Grief

The hardest goodbyes are the ones you don’t see coming. The ones you don’t plan or could never imagine happening. The ones where you have to say it even though you don’t want to. A heartbreaking pain. A deep realization, that you’ll never see them again. Goodbye was that word I never got to say before they were gone, not many people get the chance to say it one last time. Our final goodbye is when we honor the life they got to have, but it still doesn’t feel the same. The last time you spoke to them plays in your head over and over again, making you wish you got to hear their voice one last time. Wish to say I love you once more. We wish we knew they were going to become a memory, before they became one we may have laughed a little harder in their company. Held them a little tighter when they hugged us last. If we knew that was our last moment with them, the last one we would have had, we would’ve spent more time loving them and less time wondering what our week would look like. We would have spent more time listening and less time talking if we had only known. But we never get to.

Greif, itself is hell. It doesn’t go away. It lingers ever so softly making its presence felt. But grief is the price we pay for love. It creates this space where that person once was. They are everywhere except by your side and it hurts more than anything. We go through days where it feels like everything we do is just reminding us we are living without them.  It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. The colors go flat. Music hurts and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful- A purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids. And it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way. It makes you think, maybe forever was a word meant for memories, not people. It reminds you of how easy it is for all of us to be here and then suddenly not be. 

Sometimes in the face of great tragedy, you just have to be brave enough to accept that the pain is already changing you. The journey has taken a shift. Your life has changed and you will never be the same. Life hands us those moments and most of the time we have no idea why it had to happen to us. Or even how we're going to handle it. Because it hurts, it punches a hole straight through your heart. Leaving you with a space that could never be replaced. But we learn how to live with it. We may heal, but some holes can't be filled with what once was. And that is ok to hold that space for the love that deserves to stay. I'm fine. I'm more than fine. I'm happy and everything is okay. But then, my mind wanders and I end up thinking of you, and suddenly my whole body aches. I wonder if I had been numbing myself so I wouldn't have to feel the pain of missing you this whole time. I wonder how long I will have to continue to numb myself and I wonder how much longer it will hurt. When I will be able to think of you and feel happy for the memories we shared instead of sad that you're no longer here. And I wonder if you ever really do heal from losing someone. I may smile, laugh, and walk through life with a positive exterior, but deep inside, there's a piece of my heart that will forever be broken. Sadly, no amount of time will ever change this. Strangely, I've made peace with this part of my grief. This is who I am.

Grief itself is unexplainable unless you have experienced it yourself, you will never truly know the pain that consumes you when someone you love more than anything on earth dies. We feel grief so deeply because it’s a seismic disconnection from something familiar, constant, and loved. This is why it hurts when someone special dies. This is why we grieve. We will miss them forever, but we can still dream of the day we meet again. We spend our lives waiting to meet them on the other side, where the end is just the beginning and time no longer exists. Where we will begin again and the word goodbye will never be uttered.