The past year has challenged me in so many ways.

Since last March, I have experienced close losses. In June of 2018, my grandfather passed away after a long battle with heart and lung complications. Just this March, my great aunt passed away unexpectedly.

The funny thing about loss, at least the way I have experienced it, is that you never truly see it coming. Even when you feel its presence on the horizon, nothing can dull the shock of hearing that your loved one has moved on to bigger and better things.

This really hit me as I was reading acclaimed Scottish novel, "Trainspotting", over my Spring Break, just a week after my great aunt passed away. Despite the highly crass language and subject matter of this novel, I have found myself agreeing with and relating to much of what its characters have to say about life. For a while, I was just pushing through the pages, trying to finish so i could enjoy the rest of my break. It was just a couple hundred more pages left before I could relax...well, after all of the applications that had piled up were finished.

I have truly enjoyed this novel, don't get me wrong. The characters are vile, but humorous and, at some level, even lovable. I have wanted to really sit with this book and enjoy it for what it is, but the looming deadlines over my head keep pulling me away. Don't forget that research proposal, that internship application, that meeting, that deadline. It never seemed to end.

All of these things loomed in the back of my mind as I sat on a train, returning from a grad school visit in Savannah. I told myself I would read at least 45 pages of "Trainspotting" as a segue between my sleepy, waiting-at-the-train-station-too-early-in-the-morning state and my more productive state that would encompass my five hour train ride home. I pulled the book out of my bag, whipped out my trusty highlighters and page flags, and got to work.

Not long into my reading, I came across the point in the book's plot at which Mark "Rents"Renton, one of several heroin addicts living in the streets of Leith, attends his brother's funeral. After dying in combat, his brother, Billy, receives all the pomp and circumstance and this disgusts Rents. Despite his personal feelings, Rents is not a monster. He realizes that his brother has just died and, to most of the people in attendance, this is a harsh blow. Because of this, he behaves himself (for a while) and plays along with all of the funeral niceties.

Rents explains this deviation from his "couldn't care less attitude" as such: "The best way ah knew tae strike a chord without compromising too much tae the sickening hypocrisy, perversely peddled as decency, which fills the room, is tae stick tae the cliches. People love them at this time, because they become real, and actually mean something" (Welsh, 214).

Oddly enough, I found myself understanding this sentiment more when it was written in the Scots dialect than I think I ever had when I've heard, more or less, the same words spoken in English.

Something about reading this in this tone and at this point in my life spoke to me. My cynicism had not reached the same level as Renton's, but I have always felt a degree of suspicion when people express their sympathy. I know they all mean well, but I also know that, like me, they have a million other things on their mind.

But those sentiments did bring me back to reality in those times. It may have felt like things were crashing down around me as I watched the never-ending line of friends, family members, and total strangers walk through the line at my grandfather's visitation, but hearing "I'm sorry for your loss" a thousand times that night kept me grounded. In such a hard time in my life, it was nice to be reminded that people still care enough to express their sympathy because they know you need it.

Even though I thought I would by the end of the night, I never felt that any of these visitors were ingenue in their wishes. Everyone was, to some degree, sorry that I had to go through the pain.

This experience really helped me at my great aunt's funeral this year. Instead of dreading the company of a ton of strangers, I began to view each of the people around me as similarly pained by the loss. We all had things going on in our own lives, but we still felt called to honor Debra's life and share our fond memories of her. We all felt called to comfort each other because we had all been hit with the reality that a lot of things in our lives had been changed.

That's the thing about reality: it isn't just one thing.

If something bad happens in one area of your life, it shouldn't be something to screw up everything else. Reality is multifaceted, so there's bound to be another area of your life that has some degree of positivity left. Life is reality, meaning that life is raw and does not care if you're in the middle of a stressful point in your life. If it's time for a close family member to reunite with God, it's their time.

You never know when life will run you over and don't think it's going to stop when it does. Life moves too fast to regard you as any more than a minor speed bump.

You just can't let yourself feel like a useless speed bump. One of the more painful cliches I have heard in times of loss is that life goes on. In the moment, I want to punch people that say this square in the jaw. In reflection, I realize that they're right; life does go on and it waits for no one. It moves at the speed of light and you had better hold on tight to what you have while it's still there.

Instead of focusing on how much is changing and how much I have lost in the past year, I have chosen to focus on all of the things that I have gained from positive changes. I have looked toward the future, seeking enjoyment from things such as internships to a night cozied up with a peanut butter brownie and a good book. I have not let these losses deter me from living my life in fear of the day I die. I know it's coming and I wouldn't give anything in the world to know when or how.

I accept that I will one day become a speed bump in life's grand scheme, but I refuse to let that fact make my life any less enjoyable.