FIVE MONTHS

It's been a little over five months since Sara died. It feels weird to even type that sentence, but life has been weird all summer, hasn't it? 

I thought that, when my oldest friend passed away, that I'd feel very different than I actually have. Grief is a weird thing and it is different for every person and in every situation, but I don't think I really understood that until the past few years.  When my dad died, I felt like someone had punched a hole in my chest that wouldn't heal. It was a physical feeling, not just an emotional one. I'd forget to breathe sometimes and find myself randomly gasping for air. It was like being buried under heavy rocks all of the time. What happened in the following year didn't help that feeling in the least, so that's what I thought grief was supposed to feel like for everything.

Of course, then in 2018 I lost four people I liked a great deal, one right after another, and found that real, honest grief comes in various colors and flavors (none of them good) but all of them very particular to each person. Because of that, you can never be quite prepared for how you'll feel.

See, the thing is, I knew Sara was dying. I knew she was that sick. She had gone for treatments for her problems in late February and found out that she would need another transplant if she was going to recover and that she wasn't going to do it. I still thought we'd have way more time. Kind of like those scenes in the movie "Beaches" (hehe, don't judge me) where you'd get those chances to see each other, and  get used to the idea that the end was near. We didn't get that, of course. She got an infection and that was that. She passed away, alone, and in another state. I didn't even get to say goodbye.

I expected to feel that hole in the chest feeling again, but it didn't come. I sometimes struggle with that, because I feel like that should have been the more appropriate feeling. She was a Soul Friend, and honestly, you don't get many of those in a lifetime. I had four of them (now three) and the thought of being without any of them has always made me feel afraid and panicky. I thought that it would be a time of black depression and sadness, and maybe in a world where we weren't dealing with COVID-19 and quarantined all of the bullshit that has gone along with it, that would have been the case. Instead, it's been like pain from a thousand paper cuts. 

Sometimes I forget she's gone. I see something and I want to tell her about it, or something happens that I want to update her on and I realize I can't. I'll go to a restaurant and think "Oh, Sara and I need to go there" or I'll want to complain about something. She was the only one who knew all of my secrets, and I'll want to talk about something to do with those, but I can't. Even this morning, I was looking at make-up online and saw eyebrow makeup for red-heads (Sara fought the eyebrow battle until the day she died) and wanted to send it to her, but of course, I couldn't. Then I think of the things that I didn't do, or couldn't do, or should have done or said, and it's just a constant reminder that I'm powerless about it. 

It's the little things like that that make it hard.

But having said all of that, I'm kind getting to the point where I am ok with it all. Sara was my best friend, and I'll always miss her every day. I'm not ok with her death, obviously, but I'm ok with feeling the sadness. When you lose someone you love they leave a hole. You can fill that hole with pain and anger, you can fill it with all kinds of things that you can use to try and make you forget, or you can fill that hole with good memories and love and gladness that you knew them. Even with the pain, I'm trying mightily to fill it when the latter. 

And that's all I have to say about that.