It sucks that with love comes loss,
but that's unavoidable, I think. When I get emotional about the December 20th passing of one of my loved ones, I repeat to myself a mantra that I've been very lucky to know him, to be influenced by him. He was is was a wonderful person who, along with his wife and son, permeated my outlook on family and community and milking the really good, simple moments out of life.
To be more specific, I lost a dear member of my extended family to a brain aneurysm so soon before Christmas that for the first time, I spent late December and early January feeling very out of sorts, or as I like to call it, "emotionally busy". On Monday, Dec. 22nd, I bought earrings for my beloved grandmother and chocolates for my Someone's dad in the afternoon, then in the evening, strode around one of my fears - an open-casket wake. And on Tuesday I fell apart at a funeral, attended a memorial lunch at which my grandmother put a little pressure on me for the first time about how she hoped I would "get married by the time [you're] thirty", and went driving in the rain for a gift card-shopping spree. I walked around with an iced cappuccino, getting out my credit card, weaving between energetic, chatting families, passing busy fine jewelry shops, taking moments to think of that adopted uncle of mine, feeling like the world had been robbed, especially his wife and son, and just days later, I was doing my best to set that aside, stepping into warm, festive homes to joke and make small talk. It was weird.
Sometimes I think it would be a dream to just spend our years celebrating our friendships and families and loves even after they've passed, not ever having to juggle grieving with picking out a coffin or a eulogist. It's a small dream I have when I admire the strength of loved ones who are missing the recent passing of their spouses or parents and appearing to their neighbors and coworkers to be perfectly normal. I don't see that dream as a valid idea at all, mind you, I just...fear the heartbreak of a dead loved one more than I've ever feared death itself.
I grapple with loss a certain way. I try to balance everyday tasks with the grief, which feels odd, as I imagine it does for a lot of people, when one is just going through the motions, including the aforementioned wake, an event that frightens me every time (by the way, by "every time" I mean thrice, and by thrice, I mean that I walk into the funeral home in such disbelief that I'm thinking, 'If I don't see the body lying there, the person's still alive'), and at the funeral, my difficulty with the permanence of death turns into, 'Wouldn't it be sick if [the deceased] sat up to watch the priest's blathering? They could just be waking up from a coma, feeling much better, how F'd up'. It's like I said before, in those moments, I'm grappling with an unexpected death.
Another way of grieving, in my world, is speaking to the deceased. Depending on what relationship I had with them, I might simply ask them to keep an eye on their surviving immediate family and push me in the direction of those people if they could use my help, or, in the case of my mom's parents, with whom I hardly had a relationship, I've asked a couple of times that they learn their lessons, and be regretful for wrongdoings when they were alive, and when it comes to my beloved grandfather, who passed years ago, I ask for his advice, I complain, I sometimes ask for birthday greetings (to which he has always responded!), and I spoke
To be more specific, I lost a dear member of my extended family to a brain aneurysm so soon before Christmas that for the first time, I spent late December and early January feeling very out of sorts, or as I like to call it, "emotionally busy". On Monday, Dec. 22nd, I bought earrings for my beloved grandmother and chocolates for my Someone's dad in the afternoon, then in the evening, strode around one of my fears - an open-casket wake. And on Tuesday I fell apart at a funeral, attended a memorial lunch at which my grandmother put a little pressure on me for the first time about how she hoped I would "get married by the time [you're] thirty", and went driving in the rain for a gift card-shopping spree. I walked around with an iced cappuccino, getting out my credit card, weaving between energetic, chatting families, passing busy fine jewelry shops, taking moments to think of that adopted uncle of mine, feeling like the world had been robbed, especially his wife and son, and just days later, I was doing my best to set that aside, stepping into warm, festive homes to joke and make small talk. It was weird.
Sometimes I think it would be a dream to just spend our years celebrating our friendships and families and loves even after they've passed, not ever having to juggle grieving with picking out a coffin or a eulogist. It's a small dream I have when I admire the strength of loved ones who are missing the recent passing of their spouses or parents and appearing to their neighbors and coworkers to be perfectly normal. I don't see that dream as a valid idea at all, mind you, I just...fear the heartbreak of a dead loved one more than I've ever feared death itself.
I grapple with loss a certain way. I try to balance everyday tasks with the grief, which feels odd, as I imagine it does for a lot of people, when one is just going through the motions, including the aforementioned wake, an event that frightens me every time (by the way, by "every time" I mean thrice, and by thrice, I mean that I walk into the funeral home in such disbelief that I'm thinking, 'If I don't see the body lying there, the person's still alive'), and at the funeral, my difficulty with the permanence of death turns into, 'Wouldn't it be sick if [the deceased] sat up to watch the priest's blathering? They could just be waking up from a coma, feeling much better, how F'd up'. It's like I said before, in those moments, I'm grappling with an unexpected death.
Another way of grieving, in my world, is speaking to the deceased. Depending on what relationship I had with them, I might simply ask them to keep an eye on their surviving immediate family and push me in the direction of those people if they could use my help, or, in the case of my mom's parents, with whom I hardly had a relationship, I've asked a couple of times that they learn their lessons, and be regretful for wrongdoings when they were alive, and when it comes to my beloved grandfather, who passed years ago, I ask for his advice, I complain, I sometimes ask for birthday greetings (to which he has always responded!), and I spoke
to him after he called my parents and grandmother the day of my cousin's wedding. I had worn a ring he gave Grandma for the occasion, and my aunt put his cuff links on the bridal bouquet, so that left just two more households to inform that yeah, it was a big day - he'd be there, so that afternoon, both my dad and grandmother looked up at roughly 1:30pm to see my grandparents' home phone number calling their homes. Grandma knew her phone couldn't call itself, so...Shannon's chosen views about life after death have been validated!
These experiences really do have me believing that my grandfather communicated with us, and that you can't build a very solid, caring, joking relationship with another person and have it abruptly end just because they died. Sorry non-hippie types! I'm sorry to the major skeptics, regardless of the origins of your disbelief - I choose a life wherein my beloved uncle, my grandfather and all the other wonderful people I'm very fortunate to know can reach out to me whenever and pretty much however. We choose our beliefs, in a way, I think, because we'll hear or read things that truly speak to us, things that feel right, appealing to whatever spirituality one has. We have
to build our own belief systems, and that includes finding our own coping mechanisms for death. You know we can't all be like Dave Anthony on Maron.
These experiences really do have me believing that my grandfather communicated with us, and that you can't build a very solid, caring, joking relationship with another person and have it abruptly end just because they died. Sorry non-hippie types! I'm sorry to the major skeptics, regardless of the origins of your disbelief - I choose a life wherein my beloved uncle, my grandfather and all the other wonderful people I'm very fortunate to know can reach out to me whenever and pretty much however. We choose our beliefs, in a way, I think, because we'll hear or read things that truly speak to us, things that feel right, appealing to whatever spirituality one has. We have
to build our own belief systems, and that includes finding our own coping mechanisms for death. You know we can't all be like Dave Anthony on Maron.
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