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Not just any sticker, though. A sticker my sister and her coworker had been working on designing together, right before she passed. It was a sticker to cover a dent in my sister’s water bottle she brought to work every day, and it incorporated ten different things⁠—foods, fandoms, hobbies⁠—that were emblematic of my sister. That coworker hadn’t been able to work on finishing the sticker until now, but she just did. And she messaged me a photo of it, asking where she could send one for me.

I immediately started sobbing.

And I don’t just mean tears came to my eyes. I mean I curled up on my bed in the fetal position and really let it come out.

The symbols baked into the sticker represent some enduring aspects of my sister since before she could speak. It conjures thousands of mundane memories growing up together. One part of it also reminds me that there were things she loved that I hadn’t really gotten to talk to her about as much. There were nooks and crannies in her personality that I lost my chance to explore. I can’t decide if the nostalgia or regret hurts more.

Then there’s the fact that the sheet of stickers I see in this photo has at least a dozen copies. This coworker said there are a bunch of my sister’s friends and coworkers that also want one. Again, these small reminders that people want a physical token of her bring me comfort, much like people wanting the lapel pins I designed did.

I suppose, after all, it’s more than “just” a sticker that reduced me to tears.

Tarnish is a thin layer of corrosion that forms on metals, making their shiny surfaces less so. They are splotchy with the chemical reaction, and often the objects quite rapidly seem less valuable to onlookers. This can be reversed, of course, but someone has to put some elbow grease into it.

You might be expecting me to now write about how my sister’s memory is the thing that’s been tarnished, but that is not it at all. If anything, I’ve taken those out and polished them with regularity. Beyond that, I also think I see her from many angles⁠—not all of them, because she was in some ways an enigma to me⁠—but enough to cherish a well-rounded representation of her I hold in my heart.

I cannot say the same for everyone and everything else.

With the passage of time comes greater knowledge and wisdom. I’ve continued to learn about some of the people who were there for me in the early days⁠—friends new and old. It is hard to juggle my newer, better, perhaps more fleshed out understanding of what was true back in June or July alongside my memories of what I thought was true, of what I felt was true during that same time.

I don’t have mental space for anger or really any strong emotions about these slow-moving discoveries of subterfuge or betrayal or whatever I might label them, so I don’t dwell on them too long. Always in the back of my mind is the gentle refrain I keep telling myself, “Grief makes people do things they never would have thought they were capable of.” It’s not profound, it won’t look nice on a nature background on Instagram, but it’s true.

You might be wondering, “Sarah, what exactly are you talking about?”

I’m talking about the distant relatives that swore they wanted to forge our bonds anew and make amends, but have since demonstrated they wanted to feel good about saying these things, not actually do them.

Grief makes people do things they never would have thought they were capable of.

I’m talking about my sister’s partner, and the depth of the lies about the relationship he had hidden from me for months. Weekly, I learn a new element that reminds me, again, that I did not know this man like I thought I did.

Grief makes people do things they never would have thought they were capable of.

I’m talking about one of my sister’s coworkers who has worn my sister’s death like a crown, trying to use her loss as a way to bolster her own standing at work and with that social group.

Grief makes people do things they never would have thought they were capable of.

Maybe what I need to be talking about, instead, is the opposite interpretation of this refrain in my mind. On May 20, I disappeared into nothingness, letting myself become darkness lost in the universe. Until suddenly one day I got up and I did. I went to work. I finished projects no one thought I could, even before her death. I went home and sobbed alone for hours. Sometimes I remembered to eat. I took care of myself, alone, in a foreign country, when all I wanted to do was disappear.

Grief makes people do things they never would have thought they were capable of.

I moved internationally, I took on a hard language for work, I made new friends and have fostered profound connection to some in the few short months I’ve had with them so far. I learned I could completely come undone but also keep the will to live burning inside me, a lonely candle in the cold, dark void. I showed up for people who needed me in my life, and I apologized when I could not. I re-planned a future that I thought I had figured out.

Grief makes people do things they never would have thought they were capable of.

I started this blog, and I have connected here and on reddit with dozens of people I never would have met otherwise. I grew, I regressed, and I recovered. I walked⁠, stumbled, crawled, and clawed my way through the most poignant loss of my life and into a new year.

You can do things you never would have thought you were capable of.