Sarah

Painful digital reminders

“…the spans of time between the timestamps left me breathless with painful regret.”

There are all kinds of small, digital artifacts that exacerbated the pain in those first days. They still gnaw at me in the weeks and months after. It’s been 73 days, and while I have let go of some of my digital compulsions from early on, it’s still painful.

The two gray check marks on the family WhatsApp chat that would never turn blue, because they were sent after she died. (We recreated a new chat without her, without discussing it, because we all saw the same thing.)

The sent-but-not-delivered check mark in a circle on Messenger, for messages I regretted sending as soon as I did. (I couldn’t stop myself.)

Her username in Discord groups, forever offline. (It was set at just “away” and her partner had to go onto her computer and put her offline, because it was distressing her friends.)

Her number in my contacts, under the nickname we used for each other for at least ten years. Someday another person will have that number. I try not to think about how my soul would entirely leave my body if, by some cosmic horror of an error, the new owner of the phone called me. (I would fall apart, no matter where I was.)

The last silly Instagram DM I’d sent her, a video of something that would’ve made her smile. (I wish I’d sent so many more.)

Internet and digital technology has brought this incredible ability to be connected to people no matter the distance, but it also archives our every message, post, and choice. I cherish the message history I do have, but the spans of time between the timestamps left me breathless with painful regret.

I’m angry with my past self for not backing up old text message threads when I upgraded phones.

I judge every word in every message now ⁠— Why didn’t I say more? Why didn’t I reach out daily? Why didn’t I see what I see now and take advantage of what I had when I could?

And so I’ve had to archive these things, at least for now. I went to her pages so many times that the apps and website all recommended her first. I broke 41 days in and sent a message to her on Messenger, which pulled her profile picture to the top of the pile. I had to gently put them on the digital shelf, so I could interact with my digital world on my own terms. And I hate that I had to.

It is not the job of the bereaved to make you less uncomfortable

Grief is pain. It is messy. It is unpredictable. And grief is countless times harder to bear if we’re asked to hide it away.

Allow me to start with a definition. The etymology of “bereave” lays bare the brutality of loss itself.

bereave (v.) Middle English bireven, from Old English bereafian “to deprive of, take away by violence, seize, rob.” Since mid-17c., mostly in reference to life, hope, loved ones, and other immaterial possessions.

Anyone who finds themselves in this place has suffered violence of the spirit. But we don’t treat all deaths as equally traumatic.

I have found myself angry during the times when I felt that the people around me were asking me to cower in the shadows to spare them the discomfort of my pain. The times when someone went out of their way to ask me about how I was coping, but they only wanted a chipper answer of no more than two sentences and disapprovingly reacted when that is not what I gave them. The times when people avoided me (sometimes physically dodging like cartoon characters) because they could not handle the possibility of being met with my grief.

To be clear, whenever possible, I have opted to not put myself in a public or social circumstances when I am at my worst. I understand the importance of retreat at times while I ride out the upwelling. However, I have to go to work, because I can’t take months of leave, paid or unpaid. I have to attend certain events, because my future self will regret not engaging with the people I still have and care about. I have to walk out into the sunlight because she loved the sun. I wish it were a societal norm to wear a physical mark of mourning, because I want the world to subtly know that however I seem, however I act, there is a wound under the surface that hurts all the time.

And so I want to unequivocally state here, on this space on the internet I’ve carved, that it is not the job of the bereaved to make the rest of the world less uncomfortable. Grief is pain. It is messy. It is unpredictable. And grief is countless times harder to bear if we’re asked to hide it away. Grief is also the desire in one moment to not mention who we lost and in the next moment, a profound need to tell someone, anyone, about them. Telling stories of my sister still makes me cry, but if I can’t tell them, then no one knows her, and that’s worse.

The people who will sit through the discomfort of watching my eyes fill with tears as I try to finish a sentence before looking away to collect myself enough to speak, those are the people who have made each day more survivable.

I cannot worry about how you feel right now. You may feel as uncomfortable as you wish, and I apologize for that feeling I may cause. But if you’re up to it and willing to lean into the discomfort, that gift you give me is so much more valuable than you know.

[Poetry] This Pain

This pain is not like the others
Because this pain is mine

I sit with it
I feed it my regrets and rumination
I wake up with it snuggled around my chest
It sits in the corner and watches my moments of joy

This pain knows me intimately
and strikes when I’m at my most vulnerable
It reminds me every moment is fragile
And it makes me doubt my choices

It can reach my heart, my mind, my DNA itself
Any place there are traces of you
It patiently bides its time
And whispers, “your sister is dead.”

Please forgive me when I cry,
It’s not you that brings the tears
It’s the pain⁠—it robs me of the ability to remember you in joy
For now, but not forever

I promise.

Some days are harder

It’s never clear which day will be a better day and which will be a sucker punch.

Some days you are about to work out and something reminds you of them and you cry for twenty minutes as you sit on the floor in your workout space.

Some days you’re having a normal conversation and one word sets you off and you excuse yourself from the table without explanation.

Some days you’re having a text message conversation that looks normal and cheerful from the other person’s side while you sob alone in bed with your phone.

Some days you’re sitting at work silently letting tears slide down your face while continuing your task. And your boss comes in to ask you a question and doesn’t understand why you’re crying when you say, “Sometimes this just happens now.”

Some days you’re late to everything, even though you were never like that before, because it’s too hard to will yourself to do the next task that will get you out the door.

Some days you feel like your body is going about your business while your mind is somewhere else entirely, or maybe doesn’t exist at all.

Today was one of those days.

I chose not to view my sister’s body

Death rituals are a way to honor those we lost, but they are also for the living. My sister would have done the same as I did, and I am comfortable knowing that.

We didn’t have a “proper” service for my sister. She didn’t particularly like large to-dos, and none of us were in a position to put on anything formal. Instead, it was just the family (her partner, his immediate family, our parents, and me) and a small subset of her closest friends⁠, “her people.”

I had told our parents ahead of time that I would not be looking at her. Years ago, at a funeral for one of our grandparents, she and I had talked about how creepy we personally found the whole business of viewings at funerals. I clung to that conversation as confirmation that she would have completely understood my decision. I allowed myself to not view her, dressed in the clothes her partner and I had picked out together after standing in her closet the day before, crying and holding each other.

I couldn’t look, because to look would have replaced the last time I had seen her⁠—months before when I was home for Christmas and had hugged her goodbye⁠—with this moment, and I couldn’t bear to do that.

I also understood that her partner needed to see her, because his last memory was of her body on the floor where he had attempted CPR. Where paramedics had also failed to bring her back. Where she had been declared dead. Where blood of as-of-yet still unexplained origin stained the carpet around her. He needed to see a more peaceful, final vision of the woman he was supposed to spend his life with.

I likewise knew why my parents wanted to see her. If they hadn’t, there would have been a part of them that doubted this was real at all. They needed to behold her final sleep so they could wrap their minds about this out-of-sequence event in life. They needed to say goodbye to their baby, who should have outlived them by decades.

The private viewing room was small, and I had to stand in a corner near the door not to look at her when the four of us⁠—parents, her partner, and I⁠—entered. I ended up standing with my back partially toward her to avoid looking inadvertantly.

Hearing their involuntary reactions when they first saw her was hard. Nothing prepares you for the sound of hearing your parents realize their worst fear came true. My dad’s quiet, simple, “I’m going to miss you so much” as he barely contained his sobs will be etched into my memory forever. It’s also heartbreaking hearing your sister’s partner apologize to her lifeless form despite there being absolutely nothing he could have changed. None of us knew what to do, and none of us wanted to leave. Because after we said goodbye, she would be cremated. Because this special collection of atoms that made up the woman we loved would never again exist, not like this.

As I went to cross the threshold of the door and leave, I turned and looked not at her but at the casket where she was. I wiggled my hands in the stupid way we had taken to waving goodbye for years and said my last farewell, using the nickname we used for each other. And my heart broke again as for the first time, I got no echo in response.