As I sit and wonder what my first blog post should be about it hits me how short life really can be. I realize that in the blink of an eye ones life can be changed forever. You see I am saying this because not only has this happened to me but it is now happening to people I know and love. Death has a way of reminding a person how short life can be and it has a way of triggering ones own grief.
I was nineteen when my mother left this world unexpectedly, she simply went to bed one night and never woke again. I was devastated and truth be told I still am today at thirty six. Her death changed me in that moment and who I was to become. It was but a mere two years later that I found myself in the pit of grief again. I was twenty one years old when I watched my father die and to this day his face still haunts me. Death changes people and grief has the ability to consume a person if it is not felt and dealt with in a healthy way. The best way that I know how to describe grief is that it is like a wave in the ocean it ebbs and it flows. It has a way of receding so that you feel like you are able to move throughout your days as a live person and not just a shadow of a human. When it hits it has the power to suck you under and to knock the breath out of you. It has been seventeen years since I lost my mother, my best friend. Some days it can feel as raw as those first minutes, hours, days and months without her. It has been fifteen years since I sat in that hospital room and watched my father take his last breath and to this day his face in those final hours still haunts me.
I say all of this because today a friend of mine is passing away, he is a young man in his mid to late forties and a father of five. His death comes unexpectedly much like my own parents. It makes me sad to think that his life is being cut short and that his younger children will grow up without him or that his daughter who is to be married soon will not have him there to walk her down the aisle. It makes me sad to think about his father who has to make the unbearable decision to turn off his own son’s life support and to bury his child, life isn’t supposed to go that way. It also makes me sad to think of his siblings who have to say good bye to their brother in such an unexpected way and way to soon.
His death has triggered me in my own grief, the grief of watching my own father die from his brain bleeding out. That heaviness that likes to sit on top of me and try to force me under. It has been years since that winters day when I said goodbye to my own daddy. I have learned so many ways of dealing with my grief and not just the simple techniques of running away like in the beginning of my journey as a different person. I now understand the importance of feeling my sadness and taking care of myself physically and how it ultimately impacts me mentally. It has taken me a long time to be able to sit here in this grief to feel it and then to recover from it for the moment. I have learned that when I deal with it as it comes that I am able to recover from it quicker. You see when I first experienced my losses I would lie to myself, I would say Becky they have gone on a trip and will be back soon because I did not want to face the grief that I knew would swallow me alive. What I did not understand during that time was that the harder I pushed it away and refused to feel it the more it swallowed me up. I have learned over the years that if I deal with it as it comes and feel everything that I am feeling the waves go over me much quicker than if I am to resist it. Yesterday and today I have been allowing myself to feel the grief that this loss has brought with it not only for my friend but also for all that I have lost from my past.
Years ago I came across a great quote that describes what the death of my parents has done to me and it was written by Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland. The quote reads something like this: “I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”. Really what more can be said other than that…Death and grief changes a person forever but it is what you choose to do in that grief that can make all the difference in the world not only for you but for the people who love you.