Grief these days
If you’ve lost someone, you know that grief can come knocking at the door at any point. Even when you least expect it. I remember that from my earlier grief years all too well.
These days, you could say I’m a bit of a grief veteran at this point. Unfortunately my life has been riddled with a lot of unexpected losses, each at a pivotal time in my life. In high school, the summer we were all entering our grade 12 year, my two best friends were in a car accident while I was away competing with the Junior National Team. My younger brother Connor (a twin to my other brother Stuart) passed away in 2013. And my beloved dad passed away in 2022 when I was about four months pregnant, and my grandma a few months after that. Needless to say, the heartbreak is plentiful. And although my life has been riddled with loss, I still try to move through life as best I can.
After Connor passed away, I used to hate hearing “it will get better with time.” I actually have no idea why people choose to say that because all I could think was “I don’t want it to get better with time if it means forgetting him more — if it means time keeps moving.” Hearing those words never comforted me. They actually made me more anxious.
As a grief veteran, I wish I had some great advice to tell you. Some anecdote that would help even just a little bit. Truthfully there is just a constant feeling of emptiness in my stomach region, a constant feeling of heartbreak over time. Not the searing pain that is experienced with the early years, but a deep longing for someone, of a life that could have been.
August is always the toughest month for my family. It’s Connor’s ‘memory day’ and three days later is Stuart and Connor’s birthday. It’s a lot of (subconscious) grief trying to push through the surface, even if I am trying to ignore it as I often do these days. I’ve found that now, more than ever, I have started wondering about the ‘what if’s'. WHAT IF Connor was still here and we had all that time as a family of 5. If he got to live out his pivotal 20’s, go to college on a golf scholarship, what would he be doing now. And more so, what would that look like for US. How much different would Stuart and I be if we never had to burry our brother. Not dealing with that horrendous trauma in our 20’s, celebrating holidays through the year like a normal family, not constantly wondering about the unknown, I just can’t help all of that go through my head constantly.
It’s been a different chapter of y grief now that my babies are here — Mackie and Wesley. Not having their second uncle around, or their grandpa. Dad was SO stoked to be a grandpa and I know that these years would have been some of his absolute favourite!! The boys definitely bring a lot of distraction and light and I know that Dad would have really relished in them. It is completely unfair that he never got to live out his grandpa-hood and the rest of his retirement. My heart breaks for him as well as my boys, who are now missing out on such a big piece of me.
WHY ME. WHY US. To this day, I am still left wondering that; why did this have to happen to my family. And if you’ve lost someone, I’m sure you’re still asking yourself that question too. It’s super shitty, it’s so heartbreaking, and beyond unfair. Again, I wish I had special remedies to share with you but alas, I am still writing about grief over a decade later. It’s still very much part of my everyday and how I move throughout the world — it would be hard to ignore it. Grief has settled into my body, into my bones, so even when I’m not directly thinking about my people, my body will forever be on edge.
Society it seems, continues to not know how to talk about those we’ve lost. And we wont get into that today — we’ll save that for another blog post — but know I’m sending you a lot of comfort and love wherever you are on your grief journey. It doesn’t get better, it just changes. So make sure you have a few people you can hold hands with as you move through it all.