Today marks a month since Sacha left us.
I still think of her everyday.
I still shed tears.
I still miss her.
I have never been good at grief. I have never been good at managing emotions. I have a bit of a temper. Not the temper you see around these parts because that’s mostly for show… but I do flare up over trivial things. And when it comes to the big emotional things… well, that’s the stuff that overwhelms me.
You want to say that you’re prepared for the day when a loved one passes. It’s an inevitability. But the truth is you’re never prepared. You’re never sure how you’re going to react until it happens and when it does finally happen, that’s when you realize that you’re not prepared. Especially if it’s someone who’s close. Especially if they’re a constant part of your life.
In the days since she left us, I’ve been looking online for ways to cope with my grief. Every day, I wrote a little something to express my pain. Some of what I wrote can be somewhat distressing… but what I can tell you is that what’s written on paper (or in this case, a online blog post) pales in comparison to the emotion behind those words. The feelings expressed in those posts undersell my actual emotional state at the time I wrote them.
I eventually got around to gather every video and photo that I had of Sacha on hand – scattered across multiple memory cards, hard drives, and my slowly falling apart Galaxy A5 – and I’ve been putting them together onto a single flash drive. Some of this stuff has graced this online space – whether it’d be videos made for the channel or the smattering of photos uploaded onto this blog… but a good chunk of this stuff hasn’t seen the light of day. Hell, a lot of this stuff I’ve seen for the first time in years, practically covering her entire lifespan.
Some of that stuff eventually became part of the Sacha tribute video that I put together and posted a couple weeks ago… but there’s a lot of stuff that’s still on the cutting room floor. It’s stuff that I would like to eventually share with everyone. It’s the only time that I’m more than willing to open up a part of my life… something that I’ve resistant to do in the past because I’m more of a private person.
I want to say that this gets easier over time… but it doesn’t. If anything, it becomes harder to bare.
Grief is a complex creature. It’s not something that is easily figured out. It’s not something that is easily resolved. It’s a process. And sometimes, that process can take a long time to get over. Hell, chances are it’s something you’ll never get over. That’s not a weakness or a failing. That’s a sign of how much that loved one meant to you, of how much they’ve had an affect on you. There’s no surefire way of handling grief, no one way to overcome that emotional burden. Everyone has their own way. Everyone has their own pace. Just because something works for one person doesn’t mean it works for you. It’s not a matter of “If I can do it, so can you” because nobody is wired the same way.
How each of us grieve is something that is unique to us. It’s not something that has a straightforward answer nor is it something that’s easy to figure out. Some folks find a way to grieve and eventually start to feel like their old selves. Others don’t quite make it over the hump, but will often hide it as to not upset anyone else. Some folks need a helping hand in getting over that hump while others could and probably would prefer to manage it themselves. There’s no singular right way to deal with grief and the only person who could truly figure this shit out is you.
However you get there… however long it takes… eventually, you’ll get there.
Remembering your loved ones, remembering all the good times you had, and keeping that memory alive… however you do that… that’s one way of showing how they affected you. Passing that love and care to others… that’s another. Or maybe that’s all the same thing.
Like I said, I’m not good at the grieving thing. Never was.
But I’m sure that sooner or later… I’ll get there.
However long it takes…
dtm666 