I'm Sorry, Sister

The thing I am most ashamed of is I don't think about you every day. When you come up I tell people the pain doesn't really go away and that's okay. Which I believe but when days or even weeks can pass where I don't think about you, I start feeling like a hypocrite.

For example, I know mom, gram, & pap think about you every day because when I talk to them they always bring you up. I can't help wondering if they look at me and only see you or they see the me that wailed in front of your casket at the viewing and are afraid that shattered sixteen-year-old boy is just beneath the surface at all times.

For me, grief hits at random times. When I'm driving and go into autopilot. When people talk about their siblings. Happy relationships between siblings hurt but it's worse when they're complaining about their sibling. I just want to scream, "Appreciate them while you can." It hits when I realize I can't do something as simple as text you, have a drink with you, go to lunch with you. It hits late at night when I'm trying to sleep. Always like a punch in the gut.

Maybe I just never moved on and I am afraid of the grief. So I push it away as quickly as possible and try to forget you died. Then when I have that thought I feel guilty the rest of the day.

When my logical brain kicks in I can acknowledge that it's healthy not wanting to be weighed down by grief every day. I have to let myself be in the moment when I'm happy, hanging out with friends, or enjoying a hobby. I have to tell myself it's good to be too busy to think about you all the time. I have to live my life because doing anything else would be the worst way to commemorate your vibrant life.

Part of commemorating someone is not letting the world forget them. But I can’t talk about you with just anyone. None of my current friends ever met you. So, I feel weird talking about you without any real context. All of your friends, who used to be like sisters to me are either single mothers or married with children. They’re off doing their own thing. I haven’t really seen any of them in years. I know if I was to reach out it would feel like nothing had changed and we could talk about you but I am just not the type of person to be comfortable reconnecting after years. I’m a different person, by far, compared to the last time they were important to my life. Moving on is moving forward, right?

Maybe that is why it’s so hard to think about you. I’m not as close to the people we had in common these days, so I don’t think out loud about you. I’ve internalized you and turned you into this driving force that keeps me going. I didn’t take a lot of risks before you died. I didn’t take advantage of new experiences. That has changed so much. I wouldn’t have become a student leader in college without you in the back of my mind. I wouldn’t have went on two amazing service trips. I wouldn’t have taken the big risk of changing my career path early and going back to school. I wouldn’t have turned that into a new career in higher education. I would still be afraid to write more. But I’m picking up where you left off. You lived more in nineteen years than most people do in seventy.

What all this is building to is I tried to turn my grief in to motivation, so I try hard each day not to feel bad for not thinking about you regularly.

So for anyone who has ever felt they weren't respecting the memory of a lost loved one if they aren't thinking about them constantly, it's okay. When they cross your mind or when you're with people you can share memories of them with, let yourself feel those emotions. But never stop living your life. If this person cared about you they wouldn't want that.