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Making The Most Of Life After Death

Moving on isn't easy but then what else can you do

By Nathalie ClairPublished 3 years ago 11 min read
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Making The Most Of Life After Death
Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

This one is for my aunt who was also my Godmother, who raised me right alongside my mother as if I was truly hers when my father was nowhere to be found. I never felt I missed out on anything. I always felt like I had two parents. My mother was the strict one, she was the more lenient one. I'd learn early to go to her when my mother said no. My mother hated that, but it usually led to me getting my way though. In her eulogy, I left out the part about having two moms before having two moms was really a thing. I left it out because most of the crowd were elderly Haitians who probably wouldn't have gotten it anyways.

In Loving Memory of G.J.C -  continue to rest in beautiful paradise as you watch over us.

Before

The heaviness in my chest started three weeks before she actually passed away. I knew it was coming but I didn't know when exactly. I had been doing my best between work and caring for her, but I was run down and exhausted. I wanted to rest, I wanted her pain to end, but I didn't want to say goodbye.

The diagnosis came three years earlier in 2016 - - breast cancer. Her path was one that was less conventional. She was deeply religious and her faith was her strength. She never wavered and had made her peace with whatever outcome, but of course we, her family were praying for the best.

By early 2019 she wound up in the hospital with severe anemia. I knew it would be her last year and the doctors confirmed she had six months left; she gave us nine. 

The thing about her is that she was always in good spirits, always laughing, and making jokes. It was that comedic spirit that everyone loved about her. Even the nursing staff loved her.

She hated the hospital even though they were better equipped to handle her care than my mother and I would be able to at home. But she wanted to be home and I didn't have the heart to try to convince her otherwise. I knew it would be tough, but I knew I would endure whatever to make her happy. As long as her spirits were up and she was still laughing and making jokes and watching the game show network all day, I could pretend she was going to be okay.

It was when she got quiet, when she started sleeping all day, when I had to force her to eat, when she no longer had the energy to pick up her phone to respond to text messages, that's when I knew it was coming. I'd started sleeping in the room with her since she was no longer had the strength to use her phone to call and let me know she needed something. I slept in her bed, left empty for months. She had been more comfortable on the recliner than on the bed and it was easier to take care of her from there.

On that day she'd been mumbling in her sleep on and off throughout the night, making it difficult for me to sleep. In the morning I woke up suddenly out of my sleep. It was after 7 o'clock and I almost started rushing, thinking I'd overslept for work, but then I remembered she had a doctor's visit and I had already notified them I'd be coming in late. As I was getting up to go use the bathroom, I looked at her, checking for the rise and fall of her chest like I always did. I watched for a moment and couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. She was still, too still, and I got a sinking feeling in my gut. When she didn't move or respond to her name, I went to my mother. I could barely get the words out. I was stuttering trying to tell her to come check on her. My mother confirmed that she was gone. It was time to make some calls.

Everything happened so quickly. The hospice nurses got there fairly quickly and officially declared her death around 9 AM. Then we called the nearby funeral home, the one we used ten years earlier when my grandmother passed away, and they came quickly as well. And then she was gone, before 11 AM, they had taken her by body away. I was numb.

It's almost strange to me that I felt nothing at the time. I'd always been a little slow to process death, but how could I with this one, when I witnessed it with my own eyes. Throughout the day various family members came to visit. We talked, we reminisced, we laughed. It was comforting and I was distracted. It wasn't until hours later when everyone was gone and I laid in my own bed for the first time in weeks that I felt it. I had been laying down trying to figure out some sort of healthy comfort food. I had been on a diet, but I still deserved some sort of comfort food. That diet by the way was one I happened to start on a whim and happened to be exactly one month before she passed away. I knew if I waited until after she was gone, which was originally the idea, I might not start at all.

In the midst of trying to figure out if I should order something or make a peanut butter banana smoothie the grief hit me. I started bawling heavily but quietly, trying not to wake my mother who was asleep in the bed across from mine. I was a snotty mess, struggling to breathe. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest. Eventually, I got it out and I proceeded to make my smoothie, but there would be more tears in the days, weeks, and months to come.

After

After the funeral was over and it was time to get back to life, I felt like I was walking around with a giant elephant following me and I was doing my best to ignore it, because if I looked at the elephant my heart would break.

A month after she passed I had been heavily promoting my weight loss on social media. I had a moment on my way to work where I was hit with all this guilt. I had put my life on hold for the better part of a year and now I was taking care of myself. But I was only able to take care of myself because she was gone. I started to feel like I didn't deserve to be doing something for myself. I could stay fat forever, I'd rather have her back.

In that very same moment, the Universe (or whatever you want to call it) sent me a sign, or maybe it came directly from her. The message I got was something like it's okay to do something for yourself, keep going, you got this. It came in the funniest of ways. Some guy had commented under one of my pictures in which I was promoting my weight loss and told me I should try keto and that it really worked for him. I told him that was great for him but keto wasn't for me and I would just keep doing what I was doing. We ended up going back and forth about this for a while and by the end, I was so annoyed with him, I was determined to prove him wrong. Just like that my plans to give up my weight loss journey were gone.

And Now

Two years later the giant elephant still follows me around. Usually, there's a lot of space between us. I've gotten used to its shadow. But sometimes it comes closer like right now as I write this I can feel that elephant on my chest. The elephant which represents the size of that thing that's missing from my life will always be there.

Eventually, it got easier. I had to figure out a way to be okay. Even though it's small, I decided to live my life in a way that would make her proud. Every time someone dies people always say life is short. I know I always did and I held on to that idea and I would talk about living my life to the fullest and reminding everyone on social media to do the same. But eventually, I'd get back to the same boring routine that never felt like I was doing anything special with my life.

This particular death hit me differently and recovery has been slow. She was quite literally my 2nd mother. She had no children of her own, but every year she got a Mother's Day card from me. I went back and forth with the guilt for a long time. I was always aware of the time I lost because of my responsibility to her. I can't get that time back and I would do it all over again without a shred of hesitation. But now that I don't have those same responsibilities I have a certain level of freedom to enjoy my life as I see fit. There's a sting to that statement. It feels selfish to say and the guilt still lingers, but sometimes truth hurts. 

I cherish my life, my health, my family and friends more now than I have in the past. It still hurts, it will always hurt, but she sends me signs and I know that she's near and watching over us.

Her

She was a force to be reckoned with. A strong personality coupled with the most loving heart I'd ever known. If she loved you, she'd do anything for you, even to her own detriment. She gave me a balance, I didn't know I needed. My mother had always been hard on me, wanting me to be great, and pushing that agenda since I was a toddler. She was the one that pushed the agenda of wanting me to be a kid. She pushed the agenda of laughter and enjoying life every single day. She had moments where she was serious, but I can hardly remember them. All I remember is laughter, amazing cooking, and random dancing when one of her songs came on. She prided herself on being honest regardless of the consequences. She stayed true to herself and her own moral compass, regardless if others didn't like her for it. She was unapologetically her in the most genuine possible. Who she was and what she stood for is the lesson in all this, for me to be unapologetically me. Be kind, give to others, laugh every day, and do the things that make you happy.

Her death in combination with everything that's going on with the pandemic led me down a different unexpected path. I've learned so much about myself in the past two years, that inevitably led me to refocus my goals in life. The new goal: Happiness first, everything else is secondary. With that in mind, my objective is to do what I want unapologetically. To make sure the things I'm pursuing in life, whether teaching, writing, selling insurance, make me happy. But not just for myself, I want that happiness to spread into something positive that helps, inspires, and brings value to people's lives. I've had a hundred different ideas over the past two years of how to do this and I'm sure more ideas will come and go, grow and evolve. I just want to make sure before I leave this Earth that I've made an impact, that I leave a mark big or small that contributes to making this world at least a tiny bit better. Her mark might have been small, but it had a positive impact on every single person that got to know her. 

The key things that I'm focusing on right now are gratitude, love, and joy. I want to teach people methods and ways to enrich their lives that they might not have known about. And I want to live in a way that when my time comes I'll have no regrets.

Author's Notes: For anyone wondering why I didn't include any photos, for one there aren't many and that's because she wasn't a fan of taking pictures and so I know she would not have wanted them out there so publicly.

Though not having enough pictures of her inspired this poem some months ago. Poetry is not really my thing but sometimes it comes out and this one is quite meaningful to me.

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Thanks for reading! I really appreciate your support. If you enjoyed it please feel free to hit the heart <3. If you want to know more about me and my current journey, you can read my bio here and my self-reflection as a writer here.

If you'd like to follow my adventures:

  • I'm also a writer on Medium ---> @Nathalie_Clair. I tend to write mostly fiction/poetry here on Vocal but for right now all my personal essays/non-fiction stuff is on Medium. If you want more details on my teacher to writer/entrepreneur journey you can find a few articles about it over there.
  • Positively Healthy Vibes is both my YouTube & Instagram in which I promote positivity and document my weight loss journey.
  • On Twitter I am Nathalie_Clair1 (can y'all believe someone else has that so I had to add the 1) and that's where I promote myself as a writer.
  • And you can always catch me (Nathalie PostiveVibes Clair) on Facebook. I'm a member of most of the Vocal related groups and am fairly active in them!

grief
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About the Creator

Nathalie Clair

I love a good story, whether it's a book, a movie, a play. I love reading/ watching interesting characters develop & drama unfold. As a writer I create that world. I create that drama. IG: @positivelyhealthyvibes Twitter: NATHALIE_CLAIR1

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