It’s been five months since my sister existed in the only way I have ever known her. Five months since a phone call shattered the reality I used to live in and drew a line down the middle of Who I Was and Who I Would Become. Five months since I had the luxury of taking people, experiences, or time for granted.
I remember in the earliest days of the grief, I desperately wanted people further along in the journey to tell me when it would be okay. I wanted to understand what was to come and prepare myself for it. So let me offer what I can to anyone who has found themselves here because they’re now facing those first days and weeks.
It doesn’t necessarily get better, but you will change.
You will find some good metaphors—I personally found the “ball in a box” one useful. You will read way more uplifting (and depressing) quotes on photo backgrounds that all seem to speak to something you never had experienced before. You will probably take stock of who and what you have in your life, finding that your preferences dramatically change. You will cry. You will get angry. You will sometimes wonder if there is any future for you besides the hollow, bottomed-out place you’re in.
And then one day you’ll realize you made it to the surface for air. It might only be for a second, but you will. Hopefully you’ll find it becomes easier to get back to that air, and maybe you won’t even think about it as an active effort anymore. But you’re still in the dark, deep, cold water. You’ll find yourself breaking down in class in front of people you met mere weeks before. Or you’ll fall apart doing a mundane thing in public, because something reminded you of them. There will be days you fantasize about just not trying to get back to the surface and seeing what happens when you reach the bottom.
You will have to figure out whether you’re the type of person with the instinct toward life or away from it.
Five months ago I couldn’t imagine feeling happy at all, let alone consider the possibility of starting and succeeding at new job training or having an intense crush on someone, but all of these things are now true. My values have shifted in ways both big and small, and the pace at which I want to live my life has, too. But everything I see in myself is tied to the fact that I want to live. I don’t want to just breathe, but I want to be alive and present in my own life. I have not embraced a full YOLO lifestyle—I still grapple with insecurity and doubt and aversion to many risks—but the most brutal reminder of how fragile life is has also freed me from some of the ways I held myself back before.
I don’t have all the answers. As holidays, her birthday, and then the first anniversary of her death loom on the horizon, I anticipate there being days that I wish to return to the bottom and huddle there. But now I know exactly how good it can feel up here on the surface, and I will make it back up for air.
Unmoored Sister 