The past week has been hard for so many people I love. So many are dealing with big kid issues and as I look around I realize that after this they will cease to be the people I know. Death changes you. Heartache changes you. And that in and of itself is heartbreaking but it can also be renewing.
Over the past week or more one of my best friends, my loves, my teachers, lost someone she loved. Someone that loved hir, cared for hir and nourished hir. I won’t attempt to describe what they meant to each other, or what kind of persin Jodi was, because if I know anything about hir I know that she would hate my bogus attempt to articulate the complexities of hir life and hir love of beth. But I will say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all those she loved and all those that loved hir. I’m sorry for those who feel cheated. For those who hang on to words they didn’t get to say.
Each death is different. It means something different, makes you feel something different, teaches you something different. I know what grief has felt like for me but I can’t begin to imagine how grief lives in someone else. I can’t imagine what grief for this loss feels like to those who love hir.
Over the past few years I have been to my share of funerals. I’ve worked my way through the grieving process more than I would have liked too, and this is what I’ve found to be true for myself: There are moments where you think you can’t go on, and not in the cliché overdramatic lifetime movie kind of way but in the you can feel your heart freeze in your chest with grief kinda way, as if remembering what you’ve lost might actually kill you. There are moments when you can feel your love of the persin boil inside you. There are moments when you recall some silly bit of something about them and you laugh with your whole body and in that moment you forget that you’ve ever felt sad. There are moments when you feel completely fine and you wonder if that’s ok. There are moments where you feel their presence embrace you and you know with absolute certainty just how much they loved you. There are moments when you think you can’t possibly move forward because you owe who you are to the persin that’s passed and they aren’t there. Moments when you are overwhelmed by the injustice of being a better persin for knowing them and then being asked to live without them, the weight of being asked to carry on those gifts when the one who gave them can’t. And learning to absorb that grief and love and knowledge and begin to move forward as a newly transformed persin takes so long. It is slow, and at times tedious, but it gets easier and even the getting easier is tedious, until one day you realize as you walk down the street that you are reacting to the world with the gift that they gave and the knowledge of what it means to lose someone too soon, and you realize that you are stronger and healthier than you ever thought you could be. And you realize that once again they are responsible for this, this persin you are now. And then a small wave of sadness runs down your body but it shakes off quickly and in the end all you can possibly be is thankful. It takes time, but they are always there with you, teaching you how to live without them.
Jodi and I weren’t close, but we love many of the same people. And to those people I say wholeheartedly, I’m sorry. And to Jodi I say, thank you.
You are all in my thoughts and prayers. If there is anything that any of you need let me know. And that’s no lip service my friends, if you need it and I can give it than it’s yours.
ALL my love to all of you.
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