TOMORROW is my sister’s first death anniversary. I can’t believe that it’s been a year since she went away. Time really goes by fast and sometimes I wish I could also get over her passing at the same pace.

For anyone who has ever lost a loved one, you know how difficult it is to move on. Even when you know that mortality will befall all of us, it just feels really disheartening to lose someone. You struggle with a lot of things all at the same time. After all, there’s a gamut of emotions that surface when it happens.

I felt numb when my sister left. For months, it was easier to think that she had gone on vacation without telling us when she was coming back. That day she died, when I went home to get some things, our house felt so much bigger knowing she was never coming back. There was a void that only she could fill and it was going to be permanent. The house felt empty and sad as I was.

The succeeding months were equally difficult. I’d be overcome with grief and weep whenever I would see pictures of her pop up on my social media history. Sometimes I would just sit in her room and inhale whatever scent of her was left inside. I’d touch her things and just think about how she used to do the same when she was alive.

New Year’s Eve was especially painful. A few minutes before the stroke of midnight just before ushering in a new decade I realized that we would be starting the decade without her and that from 2020 on, she will cease to be in our family pictures and that there will no longer be any groufies with her in it. I will never share a twofe with her. It’s heartbreaking.

I know a lot of people share this hurt and sadness. I know many people lie awake at night regretting a lot of things they did or didn’t get to do together... You don’t realize that you have pulled away from friends and have been spending a lot of time alone. The changes are far from subtle and it can really be quite a struggle to act like nothing happened.

As we grapple with our loss, we learn valuable lessons about life and discover more about ourselves. The realizations are bittersweet but we need to accept them and deal with it head on. We need to be strong and remember that although short, they lived their lives fully and that even in death, they are loved and remembered.