Loss is all Around Us...

People lose someone dear to them every day. Whether through gun violence, natural disasters, natural causes, and now, from pandemics, loss is all around us. Loss is all around us every day of our lives. I am sure we have all seen at least one news report of a mass shooting. We have become numb to the amount of loss we are surrounded with. We watch movies that glorify the loss of life. The themes of these movies are quite similar; some pore irrelevant soul wanders into some dangerous situation and then has to fight to survive by any means necessary. But what if there is no way to fight? What if there is nothing you can do to fight the inevitable? Can you fight off a disease…a plague, that wants nothing more than to destroy you on the inside while replicating itself so it can travel from your body to its next unaware victim? Can you truly believe that you will be strong enough to overcome the unknown when there is nothing you can do to stop it from consuming you? I think about all of these questions when I think about losing my best friend…my mother. Really think about this; can you survive losing your best friend if that best friend was taken by a disease that has no cure, no medical miracle that will save them, and no end in sight?

Losing your mother…your father…your grandmother…your sibling…whomever you consider your familiar best friend…could you survive that loss? I’m finding that it’s not a matter of survival. Rather, coping with the loss depends on you, your mental strength, your support system, and your ability to admit what you may have been dismissing daily; I am affected deeply by this loss, I will never get over it, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to deal with the loss so that I can move on with my normal life.

For me, this person, my best friend, was my mother. My mother was an amazing woman. She was my best friend. I have experienced the trauma of losing my best friend as a teenager. My best friend didn't die but our friendship did because we grew apart. I never needed to replace my old best friend because I grew a stronger bond with my mother. And…she died…from complications related to COVID-19. Just typing that right now was very tough. You see, the realization that my mother is gone…forever, because of a disease that no one understands really frustrates me. I think about all of the medical issues my mother had and the trauma she has faced trying to have children in her later years of life. Everything she was faced with she overcame. It didn’t matter what her doctors wanted to diagnose her with; she took it, made her adjustments, and continued to live her life unapologetically. I took her strength to mean that everything was fine. To me, it meant that she may have been in pain but that she was fine, the pain didn’t faze her. I saw her and felt that she was going to have a long life. I thought she was going to be around to see my children grow up, that she was going to be at my wedding, that she was going to see me reach my ultimate career goal and that she was going to finally be able to understand what it means to be a homeowner. However, COVID-19 had other plans. Damn...

#grieving #thegrievingprocess #covid19 #covid_19 #losingaparent #deathofalovedone #youarenotalone