My entire family gathered in one room as we said goodbye to my grandfather this past August 18th. The man lying in the coffin had become a father to me due to unforeseen circumstances that had transgressed during my childhood. My grandparents from my mother’s side had to raise me as one of their own as my parents were unable to do so because they had to care of my older sister who was sick in the hospital, but that’s a story for another time. Now as it has been over a month since his passing, I have come down from the emotional rollercoaster that was abuelo’s death and I feel as though I learned a few things from this experience that I think many would identify with. Here goes:

We all feel loss in different ways and at different speeds.

Some will break down the moment they hear the news, others will cry themselves to sleep the night after the funeral and a few might cry days, weeks, or even months after everything has happened. Some won’t cry, some will shed a tear or two and many will bawl until their eyes sting from all the tears that have been shed. But the thing is we will all feel it and we all move on.

Age is but a number when it comes to the cycle of life.

My abuelo might have been only in his 60s, but he was taken from us. Now, I wouldn’t say he was young, but he was most definitely was not old. He was not in his prime and he made a lot of mistakes, but he could have lasted so much longer. I never really thought about the fact that he would one day leave my life. When he did, it hurt, but everyone is going to die eventually so we enjoy life as a beautiful lie and then accept death as the painful truth.

You have more family than you might think

The amount of people present at my abuelo’s funeral was unfathomable. Numerous amount of people walked in and out of his viewing room, so many that no one even tried to keep track of it. Abuelo Carlos was a social butterfly, he could walk you to Hell and back and make you stop a thousand times to say hello to those he knew. He never forgot a face. He’d met my current best friend once and he knew that the curls around her face were lighter than the ones towards the back. Every single person he’d ever spoken to had been impacted by him in one way or another. You can only imagine how long it took my family to contact the people that ended up going to the funeral, but not everyone he knew was there because we were not able to reach all of them. I know abuelo will never be forgotten because his family was so ginormous that his memory will last forever.

That there will come a time when you will know that your time has come.

My abuelo always said that he’d often be visited in his dreams by loved ones who happened to die that very same night or the morning after. He saw his father pass, his sibling and even his mother-in-law, my great-grandmother. Two weeks before his passing he spoke about how his deceased loved ones were calling out to him and that told him that it was time. He knew two weeks before it happened that he would soon leave us. He was ready, even if we weren’t.

Life goes on.

Those closest to the diseased will probably be on the same boat as you, but they will continue living their life and the world will not stop turning because someone you care about is no longer in it. School, work, fun and obligations will all still be there waiting for you when you feel better. Take however long you may need, go on vacation, change whatever you feel needs changing in your life and continue living because “Life is for the living”(Langston Hughes).

That it has been almost 2 months since he died and it wasn’t until now that I realized there was no way this was a dream.

On September 18th, I spent the day with my best friend, the person I’m most open with, yet I dared not cry in front of her because I knew that it was not the correct time or place to cry. That I had to cry about this privately. That I needed to fully internalize what had happened before I cried about it to another living soul. And so it came to be that almost 2 months since abuelo’s death and I still have hopes of waking up from this dream; no, from this nightmare. Even as I write these words I hope for them to not be true. I wish he was still alive.

My uncle is a lot stronger than I already believed him to be (and I don’t mean that to boost his ego).

The night of August 17th my uncle, Juan, decided to spend the night in my grandfather’s room with him. Around 3:30 am an August 18th, my abuelo died and Juan had an uneasy feeling that woke him up. When my tio went to check up on abuelo he got no response. For a long time Juan did CPR on what was now but a shell of what was once my grandpa, but only the pacemaker continued to make the heart inside beat. He walked out of the house, smoked a cigarette and went back to work on the CPR even though he knew it wouldn’t work. When he finally gave up hope on reviving abuelo, my uncle realized that he would not be able to tell my grandmother the news. Tio called up Robert, his brother and my uncle, - who luckily enough lived a few houses down the road -and as soon as they saw each other Robert knew. Together they called my mom and then told my abuela that she was now a widow. All through the services Juan held himself together and as composed as he could, but I could see in his eyes that he felt the same as I, yet he was strong for those around him when he should have been the one breaking down. He is a lot stronger than I could ever hope to be.

There has to be something after this.

It may sound weird and some might believe it to be too supernatural to be true, but as I said before my abuelo spoke to the dead and the dying. He used to tell me stories of how every family member and friend that he had ever seen pass had to come to visit him in his dreams the day before his or her death. “They came to say goodbye,” he’d tell me, “They knew their time had come”. And who would have thought that two weeks before his death my abuelo had begun to see the dead in his dreams once again. For two full weeks, he was reached out for by more family members than he could count. Even if you don’t believe in Heaven and Hell, you have to have some hope for whatever may come next.

It’s okay to cry.

Whether it’s at the moment you receive the news of the passing or when you tell someone else. Whether it’s during the funeral or two months after. IT IS OKAY TO CRY. You deserve to cry. You feel pain and you cry. You are allowed to express your sadness through tears.

“They would have been here if they were still alive”

Every event that you go to or every single day that this thought crosses your mind you will cry and you will feel the pain of their passing all over again. At ring ceremonies, at graduations, at award shows, at premieres, at weddings, at birthday parties, even when you came home after a hard day of being responsible; they would have been there for you if they could. But now that they are gone you feel as though you have no one to share your victories with, no one to congratulate you for helping a stranger on the street, no one to laugh at your lame jokes, no one to complain when the food isn’t just right. Because that was their job and now no one is left to take over for them. But they are, in spirit anyway.

You will be ok.

Just because it feels as though your world has ended and you can’t go on, this is not true. Everything and everyone is still there whether in person or in spirit. You will move on from this. There will come a time when you remember them with fondness rather than tears. You just have to power through until then.

This is not goodbye.

Although, you might feel like this will be the last time you see your loved one, when you see them in their coffin or whatever method of burial they chose, don’t say goodbye. Say instead, “May we meet again.”