by Immaculate Rose Cobong

“Did you ever know that you’re my hero, and everything I would like to be? I can fly higher than an eagle for you are the wind beneath my wings.” A short lyric from the song you always loved to sing and a song that evokes painful yet warm emotions I’d willingly feel in every curve and corner of my being just to remind myself that I have someone I always wanted to be like. Growing up, I have always confided my deepest and even my most embarrassing stories to my favorite person, and you, not even for once, doubted me and told me all of your secrets and your thoughts, which everyone would like to know from someone you hold very close to your heart right? But it’s terrifying to know how someone you love dearly can go from mother to angel in a space of a day.

Nothing prepares us for the overwhelming loss of a loved one regardless of whether it was clear that their time was approaching to an end or it was a complete shock. The anguish that comes with grief is devastating. What’s more is that it doesn’t disappear in a snap. Weeks, months, even years, we are left begging for, “one more moment, one more conversation, one more warm tight hug, one last hello, or one last farewell.” We learn to live with these yearnings and we figure out how to acknowledge that they won’t come true – not in this lifetime.

Ever since we were young, we were always taught that the goal is always closure and resolution, but that is not how it goes for grief. The expressions move on, or go back to normal are misinterpretations of loving somebody who has died. It does not necessarily mean that “recovery” does not have a space in grief. I believe it’s what we are recovering from that needs to be redefined. And as someone who can attest, we can never go back to the normal we had when they were still there. The person who died, the loss, the sorrow – they all just become part of our lives and they significantly change how we live and experience the world. What returns to normal is the intense emotions that we felt during their death, and the days, and weeks following their loss. I believe we recover from the intense emotions, but we don’t recover from grief itself.

The fear of forgetting their voice, the way they talk, the way they smile, the way they laugh, their nagging, their face, the feeling of having someone you can run to and be comforted when everything is hitting rock bottom, and the feeling of having someone who knows you best are constant. Continuous sorrow is normal, not dysfunctional. It is likewise normal to experience grief related musings and emotions every once in a while, because humans are bound to experience the opposite side of the emotional spectrum – not just the warm and blissful.

Although we know that the state of mourning will eventually have to end, we additionally know that we shall stay inconsolable and will never find anything to fill the hollow feeling in the stomach, and the tightness in the chest and throat. Actually, that is how it should be – for as long as the person who died will remain significant to you, grief will remain. And so, grief is one of the things you don’t overcome, but it’s okay.

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Letter to mama,

Even in the next and the other next lifetime, I’ll find you.

Be it a million years, I will still choose you as my mama.