When you lose someone who seemed to have been the glue that held your family together, you watch your family dwindle down around you. As a family-oriented person, it is very hard for me to watch as everyone I thought I was close to, or that I thought cared, almost cut me off. I know, I know, "some grieve differently" - but look, some don't grieve at all, or don't know how to even start. However, when you lose someone in your family, your family should be the ones there for you before anyone else is. Am I wrong? We all drift apart; our lives keep us very busy, but before such a loss, we kept in touch fairly well (at least once a week, from what I remember). It's almost as if that is how we -as a family- chooses to grieve. Apart from each other.
That is not how you grieve. In times of loss, you need your family more than anything; aside from friends, of course. I lost the best friend that I have ever had in my life, and I only have a few family members and friends that seemed to genuinely care or want to get through the loss WITH me. I still have not grieved. It's been twenty months. I'm still lost. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Holidays. They are all so hard. Unless you've experienced a similar loss, you wouldn't understand. When you go through a tragic event, you find out a number of things. You find out who your real friends are, the family members that cared about family, you evaluate faith, and you also find out things about yourself that you really didn't want to know but you learned it anyway.
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1. What You Learn About Family
Honestly, I cannot think of a time that my family had a get-together that felt forced when my mom was here. When she was here, everything was fun. It was so easy to have fun when mom was here. Now, we try to have fun, but it just doesn't flow, so it seems more natural to some to drift apart and give up instead. Although get-togethers at my mother's family's home never feel forced to me, because it seems as if we are getting through this loss together. I guess it's just on my father's side of the family that we have drifted apart. We don't know a thing that goes on in our lives until we see it on our Facebook newsfeed.
Assembling family gatherings are a struggle these days because someone has problems with someone. If one person is coming to a gathering, another person is not. It just hurts. The cold hard truth is that we are growing apart. I have watched us grow apart for twenty months now. The more months pass by, the farther apart we drift. It is so hard to witness.
It takes death to show you who cared about the person and who cared about their things. Material things are not that person. It's just a house. It's just furniture. The only time I pitch a fit over something is if it had sentimental value to me that reminded me of my mom, grandparents, aunts, or my best friend. Material things are not -and never will be- important.
After the loss of my mother, I had an overwhelming outpour of support from friends sending me prayers, condolences, sympathy and it was appreciated more than anything. I have cherished everyone who has reached out to not only me but to my family during our time of sorrow. I have an abundance of friends I can thank, but I'm not going to do that in this post. You know who you are. And I thank you.
Although going through a loss shows you who your friends are, it also shows you who are not your friends. I had some really good friends who were always down to party, but it seemed as soon as something tragic happened, they skedaddled out of my life and made themselves scarce. I'm not going to lie, it did hurt. It hurt a lot. Especially because these were people I thought were my friends, I thought I could count on. I learned the hard way, that I couldn't.
3. What You Learn About Faith
It seems as though the one thing I could hold onto throughout this experience of loss, among everything else I've gone through - is my faith in God. I used to turn away from the Lord when times would get hard in my life, or when I had gone through a hard loss for me to go through. I would choose a bottle over the Bible. And I'm not proud of that. But after the loss of my sweet mother, I turned to the Lord for his guidance. My mother, for those who don't know, was an incredible God-fearing woman among many, many other things that I cannot even begin to describe. You could ask anyone who knew her what kind of woman she was. They would all tell you the same thing.
After this loss, however, I turned to the Lord for his guidance in dealing with my grief. It has helped more than anything, I believe. I don't go to church, but in my belief, you don't have to go to church to worship. There are a handful of verses that help me every single day when I think about how badly I wish my mom was still here, just so I can tell her what happened that day. There is one verse, in particular, that helped me, it jumped out at me almost a week after she was called home.
Jeremiah 31:13 - I will turn their mourning into gladness. I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. He knows what He is doing, even though we don't understand it. God knows what he is doing.
4. What You Learn About Yourself
This has been an eye-opening experience. I have lost so much in twenty months. I have had days where I didn't want to get out of bed, at all. I learned my inner strength is stronger than I think. I feel like breaking down every single day, but I find it in myself not to. I have started writing again as if I'm using it as a way to vent or to cope. I don't know. I have learned patience. Patience with yourself and with others, because you only have one life. You cannot get upset with someone because they don't get it right away, or because you have to stand in line a little longer than you anticipated. You must be patient. There could be another reason why you're being held up in line, that God could be saving you from an accident on the road or some other incident. I have also learned that it's okay to cry. Before losing my mother, I held in every tear and put on the bravest face. I never wanted anyone to see me cry, I still don't want anyone to see me cry - blame in on the Irish blood in me. However, after losing my mom, I understand that sometimes you have to cry. It's a natural cleanse your body must go through. It's healthier for you to cry than it is to hold it all in.
