I would say that this topic alone has been a huge force behind me starting a blog to use as a form of therapy, but also using it to share my story with others.

I have experienced some grief….. okay too much grief in the last 6 years. A lot of it has not been processed, though I am in therapy currently, one a week, to try to get some things sorted out and learn some skills that will help me in the future.

I have survived the last 6 years by using dark humor, avoidance, food, and sometimes alcohol to push through the feeling of having a whole piece of your heart ripped out. There has been no thriving here, just pure determination to stay alive and do my best, which honestly hasn’t been great. But, I have stayed alive, and to be completely truthful, considering what a dark place I have been in, is truly an accomplishment. I know some people will never understand that sentiment, and that’s okay, I am happy for you, maybe a bit jealous even.

When you lose a loved one, someone who you were really close with, it changes who you are as a person, almost makes you question your identity. I remember losing my sister and thinking to myself, am I still a sister if she isn’t here anymore? Am I suddenly an only child? I still felt like a big sister and I knew I wasn’t an only child, but I was certainly alone, and no longer had a sister here on Earth. I wondered what I would say if people asked me about my family, how do you tell someone that your 27 year old sister died tragically in an accident? I managed to figure things out, sometimes when people would ask if I had siblings I would just say yes, and they would ask oh, how many or how old? I would usually just say I had a sister who is 27. Then they would ask where she was, and I would just say Heaven. After a while I got a little more blunt, yes I have a sister, but she is dead. I figured both ways probably made other people a tad uncomfortable, so why not rip the bandaid off so to speak, just put it out there. I obviously don’t run into this question as much 6.5 years later, but it still happens occasionally. I can say after all this time,  when I tell people about her now, it's with love and pride and longing, and not an overwhelming tone of grief and sadness. I talk about her as much as I can because the memories I have with her are good, they make me laugh and smile. I of course miss her every single day, but the pain isn’t as intense as it was the first few years.  I try very hard to focus on the time I did have with her instead of the time we missed out on.

You know how our parents and teachers always told us “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all''“?, well the new grown-up version of that is “If you don’t know something to be true, don’t say anything at all”. People have actually told me several different versions of this ——-> “Your grief will go away and eventually it won’t hurt anymore”. My response is always to smile, but internally I am thinking……. dafuq??? I can only assume that these people have never lost someone they were close with, or maybe they have and that’s just something they tell themselves and others because they think if they say it enough it will be true? Hell if I know. But for me, the thought of that pain completely going away seems absolutely absurd. I mean one day it will, because I will be reunited with them. But when that day comes, someone on Earth will have that pain of missing me, so I am not in a rush to be with my mom and sister, no matter how much I miss them, because I don’t want my people to have to miss me. I have way more havoc to wreak before I clock out.

The best way I can describe how grief and pain change over time is that they just get different. They don’t get smaller or disappear completely. You get stronger and find an easier way to carry them with you, but they will always be there. You seek help from your loved ones, friends, and therapist to help you carry the grief, take a load off. And with that help, you keep going. Sometimes you shove it in a closet, as far back as you can get it, and you just hide it there, because you aren’t able to handle it at that time, but you’ll take it back out, well really, someone else gets it out and throws it at your head when you aren’t looking, and then you find yourself sobbing, all alone, in your car, because Big Tymers-Still Fly is playing on Pandora and it reminds you of your sister.

Sidenote:  I am pretty sure my sister almost passed out from a lack of oxygen due to excessive laughter when we were singing this in her truck and she heard me say “giddy-up boots”. Yall, I didn’t know what GATOR BOOTS were. Song ——>Big Tymers - Still Fly

So randomly, when you least expect it, you feel the tears welling up in your eyes, you experience that pain deep in your gut, a longing really, missing someone you can’t see, needing to have a conversation with them that isn’t one sided. And then once you're done ugly crying at the most inconvenient time, you pause, to take a deep breath, and remember why that pain exists in the first place. That pain of losing someone wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t had the privilege of having them in the first place. And how lucky I was to have my sister for 27 whole years!!!! And my mom for 59 years. Did I want them for so much longer? I mean, duh. But am I so grateful for the time I did get to have with them? The memories we made? The stories I am able to tell? YES, YES, and YES!!!!

I’ve heard before, grieving is a process. Well normally when we think of something as a process, we think it has a beginning and an end. This is so not true for grief, well in my experience at least. It is more like a cycle that repeats. Yes you will probably go through all the steps of grief, but they may not come in order, and you will most likely repeat some, if not all of them. But I think once you accept that it will never end, it's much easier to navigate through the phases. You learn how to cope with feelings, find things that bring you joy when you’re feeling down, and find ways to honor your loved one so you can still feel the bond between yourself and whoever you lost.

It is easy to acknowledge that losing someone makes you feel different, a lot of people say it makes them feel like a piece of themselves is missing. I would agree, you miss the obvious things like fun times, phone calls, picking out gifts for them, and all of those things. But you never really know how much it will impact you in all of the little ways. These are just a few of the little things that come to mind for me:

• Eatin’ good in the neighborhood-

  • I haven’t stepped foot into an Applebee’s since the day my sister died, because that’s where we ate that day. Now lucky for me, there aren’t that many of them, but when I pass the one in Lafayette I feel happy thinking about her, and then immediately sad thinking about how she isn’t here.

• Not so GLAD-

  • During the week my mom was in hospice, for whatever reason, the smell of her kitchen trash bags really stuck with me. They are like those ForceFlex bags that have a scent on them. About 6 weeks after she passed, I finally was honest with my dad and politely requested for him to please get rid of those and replace them with literally anything else. Everytime I stepped on the pedal that opened the trash can lid I'd get a big whiff of those damn bags and it would bring me right back to that week. More specifically it reminds me of the day my mom passed. After the funeral home came to pick her up, the hospice nurse had to come and dispose of her narcotics (Morphine), and then we were tasked with cleaning her other medicines up. And I can so vividly remember standing at that trash can, my foot pushed down on the pedal, reading labels to make sure I was throwing the right stuff away. That's the moment I go back to when I get a smell of that scent.

• Christmas in the Oaks-

  • My dad asked if we wanted to do either of our favorites this year, and as much joy as it brings my kids, I just can't. That's when my mom was in her element, celebrating Christmas, and spending time with her grandbabies. She loved seeing their faces as they experienced something new.

• Detour-

  • I’ll literally take backroads and add an extra hour to a drive to avoid the part of the highway where my sister wrecked. I haven’t driven past that spot myself since before her accident. I did however have to pass that way on the way back home from a Beta convention. I just put my head down into my hands, closed my eyes as tight as I could, and did my best to pretend I was somewhere else.

• Smell goods-

  • After my mom passed, I snagged some of her favorite perfumes, not because I liked the smell for me, but I thought it would be a good reminder of her. That ended up not working out at all, turns out they only smelled like my mom when my momma wore them. Sniffing them from the bottles did nothing. It just wasn’t the same.

• Me and Bobby McGee-

  • I will never ever be able to hear this song and not instantly think of my sister, putting her entire soul into singing it when we played Karaoke Revolution on the Playstation. My sister's voice was actually pretty good, but the thing that really made her good at karaoke was her commitment. We would go from having fun and playing a game, to feeling like we were at a concert. She was a good performer.

Even writing this list, some of the things break my heart, but so many of those things make me laugh and smile at the same time. Grief is legit a Sour Patch Kid, so sour, then sweet.

I get through everyday by remembering that this whole grief thing will keep flowing, it will never turn off, it will never end, and it will never just magically disappear. Once you are aware that it is now a part of who you are, and reach a certain level of acceptance, it’s a lot easier to accommodate it.

When I wrote the word accommodate a thought popped into my head about what grief is like in the beginning vs. when you’ve accepted it. When you first lose someone the grief is like unannounced company. You weren’t prepared for it, they called when they were in the neighborhood, wanting to swing by, you have laundry piles everywhere, your sink is full, your hair is in a messy bun, and there is a weird smell you can’t find. And no matter what, these people will be walking through your front door in about 3 minutes. You really don’t want it to happen, but these are the type of guests that just don’t really care what you’re ready for. Now, what happens after you accept it and get to know it a little better? Well that's when the company turns into a scheduled visit. You had it written down and planned on your calendar for weeks, you bought coloring books and crayons to occupy their kids, you have 3 different kinds of lemonade to offer your guests, your house is clean, your piles of laundry are put away, and when those guests walk through your door, you bring them right into your living room, where you have finger foods waiting for everyone and all kinds of fun things planned.

My journey with grief has really given me the courage to write this blog and share with others, so that you know, you are not alone. It’s hard, like really, really, really hard. But it’s also okay, like really, really, really okay. You have the power to dive into this chapter anyway you can handle it. You’ll figure it out. And once you do, instead of it feeling like an imposition, it will feel more like a visit from an old friend.

If you have lost someone, I love you, I know your pain and I also know your joy.

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