I WENT back to work last Monday and spent most of the day crying sad tears. Really, it is not easy to lose a loved one. I had told friends how different it felt for me to lose a sibling compared to losing a parent (I lost my father a while back). Maybe it’s because we lived our whole lives together on the same level as sisters. We were equals, give or take the times in our lives away from each other.
Being the eldest, I saw her grow up. Held her in my arms as a baby, watched her school programs as a grade schooler. Basically, I witnessed everything. In a morbid way, I expected to go first before she did and so, that was a shock. So young, gone too soon.
The week after her passing was phantasmagorical. It was dreamlike but in a melancholic, nightmarish kind of way. I did not know how to feel; the crying spells were injected with pockets of normalcy yet my eyes still felt they were just about to fall off from its sockets because I had been crying incessantly.
Things get better as time passes. You cry less. You learn to pick up where you left off because life has to go on. You find a break from mourning and it’s a good thing although it never really goes away. I would find myself going through my days in a blur of things. It’s like watching the world through heavily frosted glass, you see it but can’t really sort out the details. It’s normal.
I pretend that my sister is on vacation. An indefinite leave of absence that we, the bereaved family, will have to accept until we see her again. Quite honestly, most days, this works for me. In the course of waiting for her to “get back,” I am amazed by how much she was loved and is being missed. I discover a different side of her I only learn about through anecdotes told by her friends. It’s comforting that she is remembered fondly.
Grief is good, I believe. Even if we find ourselves swathed in sadness and pain, we find solace in the fact that our loved one has gone on to the better place. It is best to express grief rather than keep to one’s self because it lessens the burden of our loss. Talking about it helps too, acknowledging it paves the way for acceptance which allows us to move on. We may cry bittersweet tears but it’s all good. Our soul may feel the absence and void they left never replaced, but our love for them and their memories will help us make it through.