In some cultures you're given a year to
grieve. In fact, you're expected to use the whole thing.
In others, you take a few personal
days, if you can afford to, then come in Monday ready to work and
avoid mentioning your pain.
While both offer two very different
solutions, it's an unsolvable problem.
For one, everyone grieves differently
and needs to integrate back into society and new relationships at
different times.
For another, you're never done
grieving.
There's no expiration date for missing
someone.
If we're all being completely honest
with ourselves, we know this. We feel this. Even if we're not talking
in terms of death. With every lost relationship there hangs some form
of longing or regret. Death is just harder because you likely had
less choice in the matter, what if's only lead to insanity, and
there's absolutely no flirting with rekindling what once was.
Sudden unexpected death strikes harder
because there is zero mental preparation.
The loss of a young life even more so
because the weight of lost potential is so astonishing.
Deaths you can't explain are their own
unique type of torture. It's almost like you can't process the
problem because you can't quite identify the problem. And even if you
do, it turns out, there wasn't much if anything at all you could have
done differently to stop it.
A death that is all three of these
things...
Whenever tragedy strikes, people turn
to reason and to hope. For some this is religious. The “God has a
plan” approach. For others, it could be some kind of karma. A sense
the world is balancing good and evil, or trying to. Fate may play a
role. For others still, some kind of “there is a reason, for
without tragedy what is a miracle?” brand of logic.
And in the depths of great sadness it
isn't hard to believe in a Garden of Eden. To believe that we were
made for a place far closer to perfection than what we live in day to
day. To believe we're not built for this, not originally. And that it
is that same desire for nothing beyond peace that cast us out. That
fed our shortsightedness. It is an interesting and possible tale when
you steep it in the tea of self doubt and pain.
Whatever your beliefs or whatever you
tell yourself, the truth remains that loss hurts. Some far greater
than others.
And that they never stop hurting.
The blade merely dulls as it scrapes
across our souls over and over and over again.
It is not the memories that do us in,
that bring the unexpected tears in the middle of the night, or over a
double chocolate cupcake. The memories are actually the salve.
It's the empty spaces left behind.
Knowing that person should be where
they now are not.
Being acutely aware that new memories
with them where they should be are not, can not be formed.
Because when you lose someone, you
never lose them only once.
You lose them every day for the rest of
your life.
In a million tiny ways.
Their death may be the biggest moment
of realization. The one that gets the most attention.
But it is only the beginning.
Whether you're expected to spend a year
dressed in black, or find yourself clocking in Monday morning, you
recognize that life hence forth will never be quite the same, yet it
must go on, and no matter how much time you're expected to spend
grieving, it is never going to be enough, and despite this, the only
thing you can do is keep on living.
Keep on making those not quite complete
memories.
Knowing the pain will dull but the
grieving will continue.
Because that person who is gone?
You may have loss them,
but they never leave you.
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