I have learned that it is way more difficult to deal with a family death when you never had to deal with them when you were growing up. I am an adult now, and recently I had to deal with the first death in my close relation family. Three words to describe this experience: Hardest. Thing. Ever.
When I was growing up, people in my family that had passed weren't very close to me and I wasn't even old enough to understand. When I became old enough to understand what was happening around me, no one in my family had passed during this time. I never got a phone call, text, or Facebook message saying that something terrible had happened and someone close to me wasn't going to make it.
The summer after my senior, this past summer, this experience hit me and it hit me so hard. I had just graduated from my small high school, having a crazy summer working two jobs to save money for college. Life was pretty relaxed and laid back. No worries during my summer.
This phone call I received the evening of Friday, June 17th was the worst phone call I have received in my 18 years of life. My world stopped spinning. The things around me took a pause. Everyone around me just stared at me. I couldn't quite get any words out of my mouth. Tears didn't stream down my face like how you would expect because I didn't know how to react. To this day, I still don't know how to react about losing someone that meant the absolute world to me.
The next week was a week I vaguely remember because I tried so hard to pretend like the situation next happened. I think till this day too, I try to think to myself "They are not gone" when in reality, I know I won't have the chance to say goodbye. This was the hardest part of losing her, I never got the chance to say goodbye in consciousness.
Nobody could really tell how I was feeling during this whole thing. I don't tend to show any emotion in front of people, even family. The pain I was feeling, and am still feeling is so great that it numbs my thought of the loss overall. I don't feel the legitimate emotion because I haven't come to that point of closure and it has been almost 4 months. These 4 months have lasted a lifetime without them.
The phone calls, the lunch get togethers, the Walmart trips, the criminal mind binge watching, driving to Sandusky for no apparent reason but to talk in the car, stopping to get McDonalds all the time, and all the time I spent with you, I cannot relive. I write this in hope that people feel the same way as I do, and you don't feel alone. I don't know how to deal with the death of a loved one. It is okay though. One day I will be able to smile instead of frown at the idea of your presence. One day the pain will be able to go away and all I will feel is love when I hear your name.
All I wish is that one day I will learn how to deal with your death, because as of now, I am still roaming lost without you. Slowly and slowly, I can tell it is starting to become easier to speak of you. I know I will learn how to grieve this pain away, but until then I will continue to hurt over this. Thank you for all the memories you gave me. There is nothing I don't miss about you. I can hear your voice in my head when making decisions and I can hear your laugh when I make the wrong ones. Always apart of my heart.
She lived and laughed, and loved and left. 6-26-2016
