On loss and living on

My mum and I didn’t have the best relationship growing up but as I got older, we became best friends. She went from being my mother to my being my big sister and sometimes small sister. She was my gist partner and go to for everything.

On the 28th of August 2022, i woke up to a few missed calls from her number and I knew, something has happened to my baby.

Losing my mum had always been my daily fear until the day I lost her.

Loss is not someone close to you dying .

Loss is someone YOU LOVE BEYOND LIFE ITSELF dying.

Loss is a feeling you can never understand until you experience it yourself . it can’t be explained to you because no matter how accurately described it is, you can never comprehend it until it hits you.

Like I said earlier, I have always had the fear of losing my best baby but nothing ever prepared me. to actually physically feeling an emotional pain .

You experience the 5 stages of grief multiple times because just when you think you have reached the fifth level ; acceptance, you hit rock bottom and go back to the very beginning. Over and over again.

Loss is painful, but I have discovered that what pains more than loss is the initial hope ; the feeling that it’s all a lie and a big joke and you would wake up to reality.

You pinch yourself and expect to be told that it was a silly prank, but all the calls you end up receiving are only consolations and condolences.

“We are sorry for your loss.”

“We pray you have the strength to bear the loss.”

“Take care and be strong.”

Those aren’t the words you want to hear, for this reason you start hating well-meaning individuals. “Xxxx didn’t die. It’s all a mistake. Shut up please” you scream to everyone sending their condolences.

All you want is to wake up from that nightmarish dream, pray away such a disaster, and call that person just to hear their voice.

But it’s not a dream, and you have lost them.

You call the most trustworthy person around you, and they confirm your deepest fear.

You scream because you have just become completely dejected and helpless.

You roll on the ground and shout and weep and cry until your eyes bleed

The tears never stop rolling.

You try to be strong because you have activities to do, and no one would give you a pass, but the tears keep rolling.

At that moment, you become a shell; you are walking, breathing, and moving with life, but you aren’t in your body. You are watching yourself from afar, and it’s like reality is just a movie on slow motion.

Your heart is physically in pain. You can feel it beating so fast. Feel the rock in it. Feel the needles too. Your throat hurts; it’s like it’s been lit on fire.

The utter hopelessness and dejection.

When your hope is finally shattered, and realization set in, and the pains come to make a home in you, then the anger.

“Why is it me”

“What did the person do to deserve death?”

“Why is God such a wicked God? All the prayers that went up to him were for naught?”

“Why did the dead decide to die? Didn’t they understand what losing them would mean to you?”

“Why is everyone sympathetic to you?”

“Can’t they just shut up and get out?”

You are angry, and the anger increases to a point when you can’t hold it anymore. Some lash out. Others hold it in and hate from inside.

When I lost my mum, it was the last day of camp.

The bus took us back to our city, and some of the camp counselors had families waiting to receive them. Oh, I was mad. How dare they be happy. How dare they have a living mother, and I don’t. How dare the universe make such a cruel joke.

Loss would actually bring out the worst in you and leave you acting depraved and insane.

The depression that comes from loss is unquantifiable.

Now you really just want to sleep and never wake up. Food has lost its flavor. The sun is grey, and life has no meaning anymore because the person whose existence made your life meaningful is no more.

Now you go from hating God to bargaining with him.

“Give me my mum back, and I promise I will become a nun.”

“Let me die instead of her, please. I’d rather be dead than feel this pain.”

You trade even your soul and everything you own, but as reality has it, nothing will ever change.

Now you start hating yourself for things you didn’t do. Imagining what you could have done differently. Thinking back to the ways you did things that didn’t please this person and wishing you had done it differently.

Maybe they would still be alive.

Maybe you didn’t even pray enough.

Maybe your presence or absence would have made a difference.

Just maybe.

But those are the pains you never get answers to.

You never get to accepting the loss of someone until their interment.

Loss changes you as a person, and I don’t think it’s talked about enough. You become a cautious person, and it’s like nothing can ever hurt you as much anymore.

Three weeks after I lost my mum, I lost my grandma who raised me and I loved as much as my mum.

It was at that moment that I realized I had been changed by loss, and nothing could ever hurt as much again.

“It gets better with time” is a lie that they tell you to make you grieve less.

It never gets better with time. You just learn to live with a pain so deep it becomes part of your core.

The pain never lessens. It just doesn’t bring tears to your eyes the way it initially did.

Living with loss is a life of constant misery, especially if the memories and reminders. of the person you lost are everywhere around you.

I see videos and pictures of people’s mums and grandmas, and I hate them all. For existing, for reminding me of what I lost.

That’s the kind of monster that loss can turn you into.

Many people never come out of that despair of loss, and anyone who does, never comes out unhurt.

There are scars.

Eventually, life begins to have meaning again despite the pain.

The smiles start becoming genuine.

Waking up stops being a chore, and you don’t sleep hoping to never wake again.

You start laughing, and sometimes the guilt will creep in. Guilt that you shouldn’t be this happy, but when you understand that your loved one would want you happy, you laugh louder and harder.

You learn to live one day at a time. Living one day at a time with the scars is difficult, but I have come to realize that we get to see one day.

It may take ages, but I will die too, and thankfully I believe that there is life after now, and it’s a life that has no end. So we will lose each other no more.

Yes, I will live on because in the absence of the love of my life, life is still beautiful. The grass is always wonderfully green. Flowers bloom every spring. The sun is very beautiful, and the gifts of the family I have left and the love I have for them are what keep me going and living and loving on, because that’s what my mum and grandma would want.

Loss is pain, but living on is equally beautiful.