Trigger warning: suicide, grief, death
There is something complex about grief. It consumes, it teaches and it alters you.
Yesterday I got to celebrate the life of a loved one. It was bitter sweet, full of memories and longings. Some smiles and some tears.
This year grief has looked different, but I’m glad I’ve found words to share my heart.
I’m sending lots of hugs and lifting prayers for anyone who has lost a loved one who has died by suicide.
When a loved one dies by suicide
It is Heavy, Heartbreaking and Hollow.
It feels like a monologue. It boasts both a finality and list of pending issues.
It’s a list of instant changes with feelings jumping on a trampoline and then riding a roller coaster.
It’s the adrenaline surrounding the first couple of days until the funeral, and the empty silence that follows.
It’s the haunting of memories and loop of unfinished conversations.
It’s trying to understand and maybe even rationalize a pain so deep that it consumes it’s bearer.
It’s accepting that even you couldn’t save them and how that makes you feel.
It’s loving quietly, questioning privately, responding boldly, and mourning personally.
It’s avoiding the shame narrative and choosing the light, choosing love, choosing hope.
It’s nursing heartbreak, finding words for the feelings of the heart, and learning to dance again even when the music stops and the rain pours.
It’s celebrating life even in the midst of the complexities of death.
It’s understating that grief is love with nowhere to go. One day you will smile again.
Bibi2Be 