The Wedding Picture that Made Me Cry
The Unexpected Losses in Grief
Today I opened up Instagram and saw an absolutely gorgeous wedding picture pop up. Then, my whole body immediately began to tense up and my eyes began to water — so I quickly closed the app and distracted myself by responding to text messages. That night, I thought back to that moment on Instagram.
When my sister first died, I grieved a lot of things and rightfully so — it was a huge, earth shattering, devastating loss. I grieved things like: the loss of her daily presence in my life, the loss of her friendship, laughter and joy, the loss of watching sports with her and sending her crazy texts. It was the loss of one of the people who knew me best — both how to push my buttons and how to love me well, as sisters are known for.
Losing one’s sister creates a gaping hole. It is a loss that affects every aspect of one's life and the aches and the pains are deep and intense. Now that some time has passed, I thought that I had begun to understand what losing my sister would mean for my life…. but I didn’t realize that what losing my sister would mean to me, and how it would affect my life, is not something that is stagnant — it’s constantly changing.
The loss of my sister when I was still in college meant losing my late night study buddy and my roommate, not getting to experience college life together and never seeing her wear a purple #23 jersey as she played basketball. Now that I have graduated and am no longer in college, I am learning that losing my sister means unique things in this season and new losses that I hadn’t realized or grieved before are now suddenly appearing. And that is why the wedding picture made me cry.
The picture featured one of my sister’s close friends with her sister standing beside her as her maid of honor. It hit me quickly that my sister’s friends are all growing up and moving into new seasons of life, while my sister, Liz, will always be stuck as a college student. I’ll never get to watch her move into another phase of life. I’ll never get to watch her fall in love, help her plan her wedding and watch her get married. I’ll forever have to wonder what kind of dress my sporty sister would have picked out, or if she would have even cared what kind of flowers were in her bouquet.
These things might seem silly to you, but each of them is another little loss that I have to grieve — dreams, plans, hopes and goals that will never come to fruition.
Just like the seasons of my life change, so does my grief. It’s an evolving part of my life and there will continuously be new pieces of the loss of my sister that I will have to come to accept. Next time a wedding picture pops up on my Instagram, I still might tear up a little, but this time I’ll know the why behind the sadness and it’s okay. It’s good and healthy to acknowledge every little loss that the death of my amazing sister has and will continue to bring.
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