They leave and the lessons begin

Kristy 💖

After my close friend recently passed away, a lot of people have been supportive, some with sweet words others with drastic actions. Then there came along those who had the most bizarre comments. Things like, “So what? We’re all going to die anyway” or “Oh she’s just a friend, I thought you two were related”, and my favourite “You look fine though”.

This really doesn’t make sense to me. How can anyone have the guts to say those things? And it hit me, those aren’t the people I want to be around, ever. Griefing over someone you’ve lost has nothing to do with being blood-related, nor do you have to look like a complete fucking mess to show how you feel.

Allow me to clarify this to the senseless ones specifically, and my moral loved ones in general. When you lose someone you care about and you’ve shared plenty of memories with, your body reacts regardless of who they are in respect to the traditional “family tree”. You feel every inch of yourself say “no, this isn’t true, this can’t be happening” and that’s just the first stage — denial. It won’t sink in, not even when you watch them get buried. You promise yourself you won’t cry in public, but it hits you every time someone asks about it — we’re still in stage one. Your mind is struck, your heart is broken, and your body is trying to heal both at the same time but frankly doesn’t have time yet.

You freeze.

You freeze and you notice where you stand. You start to remember every moment you spent with that person, yes your mind wants you to go through it, it wants your heart to ache and your body to shiver. Why? Because you owe it to death, you owe death the decency to look it in the face, after all, it has taken away a piece of your life. That person being buried is gone, and the good times you had need to equate to the grief you go through today.

You stop, you stare, you make others feel stronger about it, you keep a hold of yourself, and then you break down on your own. And then as days pass by, you feel time creeping in to make sure things slowly get smoother. You can somehow call that stage two when you see a slightly bigger picture of life itself. You notice how any problem isn’t really an issue unless it means losing someone you love. The world starts to look so small, so silly. And if you’re smart enough, you’d choose to take that as a lesson. You start saying yes to most of your loved ones’ plans, take no one for granted, understand other people’s pains, and know that we need one another to survive.

All that and still I am going to get the “We’re all going to die anyway” comment thrown at me.