It is hard to go into detail about how you feel when a person close to you dies. There seems to be either this rush of emotions that makes it unbearable to function or absolutely no feeling at all. It's a feast or famine, flood or desert kind of time. This feeling that suddenly the word is collapsing and having exactly no idea what to do with it. When the emotions fire they come all at once resulting in sob sessions in the middle of the grocery aisle while deciding which kind of cereal to buy, or just while watching commercials. Those moments when any and everything can set off the flow. Honestly, its rather alarming the number of tears the body produces at times its as if they will never cease. Yet they always do and somehow an entire new persona of being completely numb takes their place. When looking straight on at your friend who sits next to you, holding your hand while asking how you're dealing with everything and you reply, "Fine." Without a hint of emotion to be found. "Fine." you say again, "Of course it is hard but I am quite fine." The stare is held a little longer depending on how good the friend is. Some smile faintly and change the topic quickly relieved that the uneasy moment has passed, those tend to be the more self involved ones; while the others scan your face deciding their next move. Then upon finding no emotion or sign they simply deduct that you're cold, hard heartened, and rather awful or even worse that you are a fake and staging a front. Of course you know that the feeling is neither cold or fake but rather a result of utter exhaustian. To laugh is exhausting to cry is exhausting to think is exhausting. Every function possessing feeling of any kind seems impossible and so slowly actions become routine making you a little less human and a little more drone. The worst part however is not the embarrassing tears in the check out line or the knowledge that your friends think your heartless no those things are inconsequential. What is really awful is the feeling that this time, this pain, this hurt, this uncertainty, this season of crimson red will never end. That life will never again be sweet, the sky never again blue instead forever gray and that even in those moments to come in your greatest ecstasy you will never fully enjoy or really live in them because you will never again be a whole person. This thought is foremost the most frightening. The idea that you will not be seeing your loved one is definitely a close second yet it still falls short to the fear of never having the ability to truly live again. Because lets face it we are all very selfish and to go through life without living is positively terrifying.
Its funny life is because we all try to ignore its mortality no matter how hard we never win and death still at one point or another arrives. The day begins like every other waking up, getting dressed, deciding what to do, where to go, what to wear, thinking of the phone calls, emails, letters, comments to return, and suddenly without warning one moment, one conversation catastrophically changes your life forever. Barraged by a ton of bricks falling from the sky without warning. As if the very foundation stones that once supported you have disappeared and instead a feeling of falling takes over continually providing the anxiety of hitting the ground yet never the release of impact. Even in the case of the terminally ill or very old there when the death is expected there is no sufficient way to prepare. It is no less unbelievable and tragic when it happens to someone who has your heart. Who do you talk to when you do not want to see anyone? What can you say or do to make things better? The questions are endless and moment seems to last for an eternity. At least that's the way I felt when my grandmother passed away. There I was three thousand miles away from home in a foreign country surrounded by people who had known me for little under a years time and I was blind sided by this huge realization that I would never be able to see her again. A pillar in my life had collapsed and I was left alone to soldier on. I sat at a cafe on campus in utter anguish and yet around me as classes ended and the halls began to fill with boisterous and loud people I realized I was the only who felt that pain. How could it be that such a earth shattering experience could have taken place for me and no one else? Not one other person felt that pain or fear that seemed so real. It made me think if I could be sitting stewing with so much inside of me the pain effecting me so deeply that it seemed tangible what could be going on with these other people. What tortures were they carrying with them and just masking to get by the day? It was the strangest realization and perhaps the most heart breaking because I surely was not the only one with so much heart ache. Time however knows no pain never stopping to ponder its feelings and thus life continues and people are left to shoulder their burdens.