Losing someone sucks. Death sucks. I wish I could put it more eloquently than that but if I'm being honest, it just plain sucks.

If you Google "grief," a bunch of websites will pop up telling you there are five stages or phases of it. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Everyone grieves differently, but I think we all experience most if not all those phases in our own ways.

I'm lucky. I know a lot of people who lost their grandparents, parents, close friends, etc. Up until my senior year of high school I hadn't really lost anyone who I was close to. No one had left my world and shattered me yet. Until one Tuesday.

I had stayed home "sick" because I was a second semester senior and a headache qualified as a bed rest worthy sickness to me. I was laying on my couch watching reruns of Grey's Anatomy when I got a notification of a new email. I opened up the app on my phone and began reading. I don't know how to explain this moment to any of you. My entire body went cold but at the same time I broke out into a sweat. I was crying and I couldn't remember the first tear falling. I could hear myself saying "no" over and over again but it didn't sound like me. Its hard to explain, but if you've lost someone then you know what I'm talking about.

My school sent out an email that my homeroom teacher had not shown up for work (which was very unlike him). Faculty became worried when he didn't call in and sent someone to check his house. They found that he had passed away in his sleep.

I know some of you won't understand why I care so much about the death of a teacher, or why it affected me so much. My homeroom teacher wasn't just another person telling me how to pass high school and get into college. He was another father to me. He googled the boys I told him I liked just to make sure they didn't have any mug shots out there. And when those boys broke my heart, he was there to write me a pass to skip class so I could have a minute to breakdown. He had more heart-to-hearts with me than I think I've had with any of my friends. He kept me in line while letting me figure things out for myself. In another article I said my parents pushed me into adulthood with a loving force. Mr. Tansill cared about me and my fellow classmates with that same loving force. He didn't have any kids of his own so he adopted all of his students. I don't think I would have made it through high school without him and finishing senior year without him chatting at my locker was one of the hardest things I've had to do.

What they don't tell you about grief is that everyone else will move on. Sure, they might be sad when you bring it up but they're not gonna think about it everyday. You will. Everyone will move on and go about their lives and you'll be wondering why you're not fine yet. My school was extremely supportive of my healing process, allowing me to talk to our school priest whenever I needed to and to go home after the funeral. They couldn't have handled it any better in my opinion. But, still, eventually everything went back to "normal" for everyone else. I was stuck in the past and unable to let myself let go and accept that this was real and he wasn't coming back.

I think its important to let yourself heal at your own pace. Its been over a year and I'm not "over" it. There are times where I'll randomly get incredibly sad knowing that I won't ever get life advice from him again. Recently, I got a tattoo dedicated to Mr. Tansill and it does feel like that helps me keep him close.

I have gone through all the stages of grief that everyone talks about and have finally accepted the reality of the situation. You can't bring people back and I hate how far heaven is. But love doesn't die. I have a lot of grief because there was a lot of love there. And its okay to still be sad no matter how long its been. Even just writing this makes me miss him like crazy. But my point is that thats okay. You shouldn't feel pressured to act like you're fine if you're not. Day by day it'll get easier to live with but that doesn't mean you don't still miss them.

I wish heaven was closer. I wish he was still around. I wish that I was as fine as I act. But my faith allows me to believe that I'll see him again, and right now thats enough for me. And the people that we lose, really do want us to be happy. So, we owe it to them to try.