Death or Loss?

I have always seen life as a story of chaos.

I think everyone’s is.

Life is so … random. I can almost compare it to my mood-swings. Now you can feel overflowing happiness running through the back of your spines. The minute after — all you can feel is mere numbness.

You could be sharing laughter with someone you dearly love right now. Exchanging stories, touching hands, interlacing fingers. The minute after — you could receive a call from a relative telling that a member of your family passed away.

Death.

Tell me, which one is more painful?

Death or loss?

Does it hurt more to die than to lose someone forever? Or does it hurt more to cope with the loss than to have your life taken away?

Which option would you pick if you were to choose one to happen to you?

Death, or loss?

I used to ask the exact same question to myself. That was when I experienced loss so painful that I begged God in my prayers to take my life away. “Take me,” I said. “I can’t endure the pain, please — make this end. Take me.”

The pain went away.

It took some time for me to heal. But I feel no more pain now. I do miss them. Memories about them still come back and forth. They still visit my dreams every now and then. I have several traumas including fear of visiting the hospital where someone I dearly loved died. But I don’t feel anymore pain. I have healed.

So I thought, maybe — just maybe, it hurts more to die.

But I recalled what it feels like to lose them. I recalled what it feels like to encounter something that reminds me of them, and then realizing that they’re not here. Not anymore. I recalled what it feels like to accept that I could no longer ask my dearest Shera to grab a coffee with me, or to accept that I could no longer tick anything else on my and Em’s bucket list. It hurts knowing they’re no longer here. The pain might be relieved, but turns out that it’s still there. It’s still within me.

So I asked myself the same question again:

Does it hurt more to die, or to lose someone forever?