Grief and the Chasm it makes

How to carry on with life when you feel like it’s over

My sister passed away 15 months ago. I thought that by now, the pain would have lessened, but it hasn’t really. I miss her so much every day. I miss her laugh and her wicked sense of humour, and I miss her hugs.

She had a lot of issues, and that’s the one thing that has made losing her a little more bearable, is the thought that she is now at peace. Those issues are no longer hers to carry, and I am so thankful for that, because it was horrible seeing her suffering.

The thing is that grief works in a strange way. For some of us, the person we’ve lost was suffering; for some of us, it was completely unexpected, and there was no warning at all.

The only thing that we know for sure about grief is that it does not discriminate. It will come for us all at one time or another, and when it does, we will need to just walk through it in whichever way is right for us.

For me, this has meant surrounding myself with good friends; people who have been there for me when I’ve been crying (ugly crying) down the phone, and when I’ve needed someone to just give me a hug. It has meant throwing myself into my creative pursuits, and really focusing on them. It has meant escaping into the made up world of my stories, and the stories of others.

That’s the thing though… this is what works for me. It may not work for you, and that’s okay. What is important to remember is that we must do whatever it is that works for us.

To some extent, we must adopt an attitude of “Whatever gets you through the day.” If we do this as many times as required, we will eventually find that we have a day when we can forget this attitude, and hopefully, as time passes, those days will become more, and the “whatever gets you through the day” days will become less, and really, that’s the only way to truly tread this path of grief if we are to ever cross that chasm and make it to the other side.