Coping with Grief: A Year Later

 I was hesitating whether to make this post or not, but I simply needed a place where I would convey all of my thoughts, this blog has been both my creative yet personal diary, and as I previously mentioned it in my last year's post, I wanted to share and write more on different topics so here I am now. 

It is true that our life cycle is to be born, grow and die, and sure there's many other stages in between we all get to experience but mainly that's what life is abour. When we are kids, we live in our own little world and sometimes we might or might not understand what goes on in our surroundings. Our parents then try to think about many ways on how to explain to us the whats, whys and even hows if we get to experience such scenarios, like the death of a loved one, at an early age, some may remember it, others may have some vague memories, every case is different for everyone. 

The pain of losing someone dear to my heart started at age of six years when my great grandma (from my mom's side) passed away. I remember as a kid being so sad and crying for our loss, I probably even understood what the meaning of death was as well as her not longer being with us anymore. I can't even barely remember any other emotions or feelings.

Then, it was at 11 years old when I lost my maternal grandpa in Nov. 2005. I clearly remember that day, I was at school and I heard mine and my brother’s name on the speaker. Mom had come pick us up and I was told he had passed away. It was truly heartbreaking. He wasn’t sick at all, just diabetes and also heart problems. Everything happened too fast as well. The only thing I can remember was once he was at the hospital and I went to visit him, I clearly remember telling him to eat his food so he could go back home and be with us, he laughed and smiled and I think that was my way to show my love for him. For his funeral and days after that, I don’t remember how I dealt with such pain, I have very vague memories of that day as of now, but I know I was with one of my cousins and we were so focused on talking about other things that I barely paid any attention to what was going on around us, even though I exactly knew I had just lost my grandpa.

In 2006, my grandpa from my dad’s side, started slowly getting sick and sick and sick. I remember going with my mom to the hospital to pick out the results and even asked a doctor what it meant and found out it was cancer and it had spread all out / over through his body. I looked at my mom as if I were telling her with my eyes, am I now going to lose my grandpa too? Again, everything happened too fast. One of the moments I can’t seem to forget and it always comes to my mind was the look he gave me as I was feeding him. He couldn’t speak. He just did it with his eyes and that look is one I will never forget. There were some tough times and we lost him on Dec the 26th, 2006. I cried a lot and tried to be stronger and be there for the rest of the family. Until someone told me and asked me if I didn’t have any feelings, why wasn’t I crying, didn’t I love him enough and such, it hurt to hear that, but I have never been vocal about my feelings, and if I ever go through something I would keep it all for myself. Losing both of them still hits me hard to this day. I look at me and everything I have achieved so far and think about them both, I look at my little cousins and say how happy my other grandpa would be to have more grandchildren and now great grandchildren.

I didn’t experience this again until 2009, with the loss of one of my grandma’s sister’s passing, again cancer, this time breast cancer. I admired how much she wanted to live and didn’t want to die and had her hopes high until the very last day, but God had other plans for her and that’s not something one should never question. It also hurt since I grew up surrounded by her love and presence and it was truly sad and heartbreaking. It was very sad and an image that also pops up to my mind is when they came to pick up her body since she’d passed away at her home. A scene I wish I had never seen but that I now can’t seem to unsee.

Too many years went by and passed that it wasn’t until 2021 I experienced the pain of grief but now at a more adult age, at 26 with the loss of my 100 year old great grandma on May the 2nd, who got sick and then when she was started doing better, there were some little complications and got worse and sadly passed away. It hurt and I cried so much for two days straight, I learned that it was God’s plan and I was thankful for allowing her to live this many years so that gave me somehow some sort of relief plus I knew we couldn't be selfish either and/or have her suffering.

When I was just starting to overcome that pain, a week after her loss, little did we all know we would all experience this again with the loss of my grandma from my mom’s side. She was sick but not to the point of something really bad that had gotten worse. In fact the day before— May 9th, it was Mother’s Day and I called her but who would know it was going to be the last time I would hear her beautiful voice. She passed away the day after. It really hit us all so hard. Coping with grief felt different this time around— It was at that moment, when I felt like my whole world and life completely shattered and vanished in front of my eyes— it felt like a part of me was gone too. Too many days spent silently crying to sleep in the darkness of my room. Seeing her dead body that day broke into pieces my heart, but as I saw her and can live through that moment again vividly, she was just sleeping... very peacefully even her face expression wasn't from someone who suffered, in fact she was kind of smiling. 

I have come to think that after experiencing grief at different ages and moments of life, each one has been different on its own, but my grandma's passing is still what I call to this day, "the cherry on top", after that, my days were so gray, I was succumbed by a sadness that it really was hard to get rid of, more like overcome, I did not want to cry or be sad, but I guess I was just still in a shock and in denial, and I just had to take some time to grieve and which I did and took me also almost a year to fully get back to my normal self. I learned that it was okay to feel sad or cry, and if I felt the need to do it, I would, as well as of to let go of that feeling and person. 

I am thankful now that since I've learned to take my own time to grief, I also learned how to control my emotions and not the other way around, aka let my emotions control me, because this last would have the opposite effect on me and never did any good. I'm thankful to God for all this time too, because He's the one who has actually taken this sadness away, my days are so much brighter than ever before, I feel a lot happier, and no, I'm not going to lie, but even as I write this post is my grandma's first year anniversary of passing away, I did feel down early this morning but overall, I am doing good. I really don't know how all over the place this post will be, but I have to say what a journey it was, a long path I had to walk and go through. I am also beyond grateful for all the memories that I now cherish on this day. I can now say that I have finally let go of it and them, and that I will always love them and remember them all.