Digital Hoarder

The only people who think there’s a time limit for grief have never lost a piece of their heart.

I had my own notion of grief. I thought it was a sad time That followed the death of someone you loved. And you had to push through it To get to the other side. But I’m learning there is no other side.   There is no pushing through. But rather, There is Absorption. Adjustment. Acceptance.   And grief is not something you complete. But rather you endure.   Grief is not a task to finish, And move on, But an element of yourself – An alteration of your being.   A new way of seeing, A new definition of self.

When a person you love is sick or suffering, you begin to grieve before the actual loss. In some cases you may think that most of your grieving is already done. But despite your preparations, the grief that occurs after a person’s death goes beyond all your expectations.

Life is so mercilessly relentless, and that’s what makes grieving hard. The world keeps on spinning, and after every sleepless night, the sun still rises. The show must go on. There is no timeout for you to step off the merry-go-round, catch your breath and process your pain. There are people in your life to interact with, for whom you must paste on a smile or at least hold back the tears. Dealing with the living can be more exhausting than the dead sometimes. Friends try to be supportive but eventually run out of well-intentioned platitudes. After a while, it becomes awkward for them to ask how you’re doing. You can see the thing they want to know, in their eyes : “How long are you going to take to get back to normal?” They don’t actually say it of course, but the question is hovering there, like a pesky fly buzzing inside their skull. And the worst thing is if they did ask, you wouldn’t know how to answer. You have no idea how you made it through yesterday, let alone how long it will take until this vise that’s slowly crushing your heart will relinquish it’s death-grip, if it ever does. Going on living – that’s the hardest thing about grief.

The death of a mother is the first sorrow wept without her.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.