We are creatures of habit, and when someone is in our life for a while, we get comfortable with their presence. We are well aware but choose to ignore that in a flash, all of that can change. One day we are walking down the street thinking what So-And-So will want for dinner or that we should give them a call, and the next thing we know they are gone. Whether a death, a breakup, a lost pet, or some other circumstance is responsible, nothing can prepare us for losing someone we were not prepared to lose. Emotions run rampant, memories become torture chambers, and time seems to stand agonizingly still. One of the hardest lessons we have to learn is what happens to us when we don't get a chance to say goodbye.
We grieve like we have never grieved before.
There is nothing that can make us feel the way we do when we lose someone we love. Nothing. That feeling is magnified to a traumatic degree when our loss is sudden and unexpected. We realize just how many plans we had made for the future and have to come to terms with the fact that every single one of them is now impossible. The worst thing that can happen in the course of our day is to stumble on a picture hiding under the couch or a note on the fridge we never saw. Grief overwhelms us, it surrounds us, it becomes us.
We attach to whatever we have left.
When we lose someone, we try to soak up every bit of them we can like they are the air and we are suffocating. We run over every memory in our mind, every conversation, we pour over all of the pictures of them that we've ever taken, we sleep cuddled up with their shirt or fill our house with their favorite flowers. We will do anything, anything, to feel them close.
This becomes incredibly confusing if our relationship with this person was less than perfect. We are filled with conflicting desires to simultaneously hold everything about them close and to push all traces of them away forever. We get on a seesaw we can't climb off of, the most wonderful and horrible thoughts running through our heads at the same time. We have both dreams and nightmares of seeing them again as we sleep. Our hearts are torn between both love and aversion. We become exhausted. But still, we hold onto everything we can.
We become afraid.
The trauma we feel after a loss changes us irreparably and instills in us a fear greater than we have ever known. Suddenly we really know that life is too short, even though pop culture and t-shirts have been telling us for years. We develop a constant fear of losing someone else and a small bubble of panic erupts every time they tell us they are doing something that implies even the smallest amount of risk. We are paranoid about car rides and new illness and everything, everything, terrifies us. We are abruptly anxious that we are not living life as we should and that our choices for the future are all wrong. We feel like we can't breathe at the thought that the years to come now seem fleeting and anything but guaranteed. We question everything and drown in second-guessing.
Guilt consumes us.
We are constantly reminded to not take loved ones for granted, but none of us are perfect. Life gets in the way. Long days at work turn into crass words at home. No matter how much we showed our gratitude and love while they were in our life, it will never seem like enough. We go over and over how we should have acted, what we should have said, all the times we never called and all the times we complained. Every instinctive smile or laugh makes us sick to our stomach when we realize that for a moment, in spite of everything, we were happy. We become our own worst enemy and make ourselves pay a price no one ever held us to. We will suffer keenly at our own hands.
We disengage.
A common expression of grief is to let go of everything around us. We feel foolish for caring about anything when our whole world just came crashing down right before our eyes. Nothing seems important anymore, and things we used to love are of no interest to us. We lay in bed and we cry, but we also stop calling our friends. We don't stop by for drinks after work. We give away tickets to the event we've been looking forward to for months. We become so numb that to do anything for enjoyment takes an incredible amount of energy and is more hassle than it's worth.
We become dependent.
It is human nature to need others, there is no getting around it. But when we experience sudden loss, we never knew we could be so helpless. We need people to remind us to eat, to wake us up as we sleep til 11 am, to drag us out of the house because we haven't left in days. Even those who aren't outspoken about their feelings will let out a waterfall of grief and pain to anyone who will listen. We suddenly realize that we are needy and that we would not make it through without the people around us. We let go of our desire to be independent, to not get in the way or impose, and we accept our state of dependence.
We keep going, but we are never the same.
The funny thing about life is you never know how strong you are until you have to be. People are remarkably good at carrying on when they think it's impossible. At first, we just go through the motions, but every venture out of the house and trip to the grocery store is a small victory. Over time, it gets a little easier. We reach a state of functionality, we may even "get over it", but we will never, ever go back to who we were before.
The loss of a loved one leaves a hole in our life that can never be filled, and that pain will always be there. It will transform and evolve over time and it will become easier to carry, but it will never leave. We will have to come to terms with the fact that we will never have our mom on the couch as we try on wedding dresses, or we will never get to see our best friend graduate from college, or the person we thought would be ours forever is soon to belong to someone else. There is recovery from pain like this, but there is no cure.
Any loss is heartbreaking, but a sudden and unexpected one changes us profoundly. And there is nothing, nothing, that can make us ready for the goodbye we never got to say.
