April 16, 2016. The worst day I’ve experienced in my life thus far. On April 16, 2016, my family and I stood around a hospital bed and watched my grandmother, my Oma, take her last breath. It was almost as though in that exact moment we, especially those of us who were younger, were all forced to drastically change ourselves. We were forced to understand that life is short, and that people really do die. When death becomes something so real and tangible, there’s really no way you can ever truly be the same.
It’s been one entire year since I lost my grandmother. She was the most wonderful, caring, loving person who always saw the joy in life and never took anything for granted. If someone told me five years ago that my time with her was so limited, I would’ve been over her house any time I got the chance. I would’ve hugged her longer and called her multiple times a day. But the problem with life is that we don’t get to know how things are going to turn out beforehand. We have to go into everything with an open mind, and always live presently. I can’t believe it took me eighteen years to realize that—and at the same time, I’m glad I realized it at such a young age.
When death became so real to me, I realized I would never again treat losses of any kind the same way. I stopped trying so hard to keep people in my life, and began looking more realistically at everything. I began to wonder what the point was of forcing myself to be part of situations in which I knew the end result would be discontentment and disappointment. I started doing what I wanted, what made me happy. And, thankfully, once I got started, I never looked back.
So as an entire year without my Oma went by, I was thrown endless situations that, I could only imagine, some people definitely would never be able to handle. I was empty, hopeless, and distraught at times. A lot of times I felt like I was laying on the cold floor of rock bottom and that, even though everyone knew I was there, I was still being kicked anyway. I wanted to scream and cry and I always wondered why nothing was fair, why everything was changing so rapidly and why I could never stay happy for so long before some other issue would surface. I’m sure one day I’ll look back and laugh at some things, but in the moment, high school can be vicious.
But while I was powering through, feeling lost and empty and full of darkness, I didn’t realize how much strength I had actually developed. Strength to seek out the best aspects of life—to seek out happiness and positivity. As I look back at the past year, I realize that I needed to experience the biggest loss in my life to understand how to handle other “losses” in my life. Because if my family and my good friends are alive and well and around me, how can I regret my decisions to move past negativity?
So what I’ve learned, as the year anniversary of my grandmother’s death circled around this Easter, is that we can all take something from loss. We can either stay at rock bottom and accept our losses as the universe turning against us, feeling sorry for ourselves and staying in situations that make us miserable—or we can move on and move up. I owe all of my newfound strength to my Oma, and even though I miss her every single day, I thank her for showing me what’s truly important.
