Grief is something that every person does differently, and I know that we have all done our fair share of grieving over the last two years. Something that has always been said to me is that time heals, but to what extent?
Personally, I am still traversing the different stages of grief seven years after I lost one of the most important people in my life, my grandmother. This idea that grief is a one-time cycle, is over advertised, and the reality that grief is like water or something thrown under the rug; something fluid and that you cannot see. There are days where this grief does not even cross my mind and then there are others where it has me trapped, unable to remove myself from these thoughts and memories, like a tsunami of emotions that plague my system. Despite this, I feel that I am lingering in this sense of loss rather than pushing through and moving on with my life, but that is something that I would rather not do.
I lost my grandmother when I was 12, or in the sixth grade. She was my rock, the light of my life and she taught me so many things: from knitting to baking, to how to love. It has been so long since she has passed and in this time I have become a different person. I have thought a lot about the person that I am today and the young girl she knew and loved, and if she would still feel the same way.
As someone who is unrecognizable from even the end of high school, I feel very disconnected from the person that I was as a child, especially from my middle school years. I used to stay up at night and wonder what she would think about me and what I have done with my life. This person missed out on, well, everything: my first girlfriend, my theatre experience, my high school graduation, and so many more. The farther and farther in life I get the more I feel like I am losing a connection to her since I am losing this connection to my past self. These connections never really do fade but they manifest in the weirdest of ways. I do these things that remind me of her subconsciously, especially when I miss her, like drinking tea that she liked, or making the cookies we used to bake together. It is not the same as bringing her back but I like to think that there is a little piece of her in everything that I do.
I personally think that because of COVID-19 we as a society have become desensitized by death, before this I could not imagine looking at social media or the news and reading about the thousands of people that pass away every day. Since there is this heightened number of losses, every person is going through grief in some capacity around you. The biggest thing that has gotten under my skin is the idea that we have to move on to get through and how pondering on the past is not going to change the future. This is something that I understand, but these people had families, lives, crazy stories, and everything in between, and then their legacy was overlooked and erased. There will be people that are viewed as only a statistic, rather than someone who brought good to the world. I am more surprised to see that the world has taken this insensitive stance against the process since we are losing a record number of people. Yet despite this loss and grief, change is coming slowly and there is little chance that our habits and feelings will change.
The moral of the story is that no matter who you lose or when you lost them, you have the right to go on this journey of grief for as long as you need, and there are some people that will be on this journey for the rest of their lives, and that is okay. I know personally, these feelings can be as small as the current in a stream and as large as a tidal wave crashing on my day, but it is important to acknowledge these emotions and how they affect you. There will always be people in your corner who will give you time to feel these emotions, and in addition to these people, there are services that help with grief, because no one should do this journey alone.
Please visit the resources below if you need help: