If We’re Being Honest: Grief & Loss

I used to have a blog that was fairly low on the radar of the people I knew in real life – friends, family, coworkers, etc. It used to be a little bit easier to just curl up with my laptop in my PJs after a long day and type out a post full of raw emotion and slap it up on the internet. I suppose it’s just always been easier for me to tell a readership of strangers what I’m thinking. There have been a few changes since that time in my life though – you know, the angsty teenage years of writing deep and meaningful posts on the internet. For the most part, I just plain don’t have a lot to gripe about anymore. My blog is an upbeat place where I share snapshots of my life and my life is pretty good most of the time. But sometimes it’s not so picture perfect and I think it’s good to share that side of life too.

Yesterday came and it went like all of the other days that have come and gone since my father-in-law passed away but for some reason it’s harder to see that date again, that time on the clock – one full year. I don’t think you can fully grasp the reality of time until you loose someone. The hours seem to pass at warp speed and life can become a weird countdown of days, months, and years if you let it consume you. I lost my dad when I was 11, along with several other close family members shortly before and after that. I’ve been able to find peace in those experiences as I’ve gotten older. I can tell how loss has shaped me and made me hyper aware of every single second. It’s given me the ability to be fully present in a moment and recognize it for all of it’s beauty; to be able to watch a perfect memory forming right before my eyes. Sometimes I just stop and think right in the middle of it all, “We’ll always remember this.” This is one of the many reasons I feel the constant need to take photos – the need to remember the little things or the thought that one little picture could become so valuable to someone if there’s ever a time when that’s all they have left to remember someone by. It sounds a little dark and maybe it is but I’ve become so thankful for this awareness.

It’s really easy to stand still in grief – to become angry, to refuse to recognize all that you still have. We aren’t built to see what we have, only what we’ve lost. But I refuse to live that way. I wont go through life feeling like I’ve been robbed – I just wont. That’s not to say I wont ever be sad or ungrateful or have a bad day – that’s life. But overall, I want to be the kind of person who sees the silver lining. I want to be slow to speak negative or angry words. I don’t want to rush or be in a hurry. I want to be truly thankful to be alive. Because if we’re being honest, we just don’t have any idea how long we’ll be here. So why would we waste it?