~ Life Goes On

When tragedy strikes, our friends will tell us that life goes on. We then tend to look at them as if they had three heads. In our mind, we’re thinking they’re crazy and have no clue at all as to what they’re actually saying and how we're actually feeling. I only say this because when I lost my mom, friends would tell me that in time, the pain would ease and that life would go on. While I realize that these words were said with my well being in mind, I remember thinking to myself that the pain of losing my mom will never ease and that while I knew life must go on, it would have to do so without me.

I now know that that is how we think when we lose someone we love, whether it’s a parent, a spouse, a child, a friend, etc. In our mind, life as we know it, is over. I’ve since learned that while our lives may never be the same due to the immense absence of this person in our lives, it does, indeed, go on.

At the beginning, we grudgingly put one foot in front of the other, taking baby steps back towards our life. Day by day, we reclaim bits and pieces of a life that we feel was stolen from us; a life that has now been ‘readjusted’ without our permission.

At first, we don’t recognize the signs. We slowly begin to laugh again. We once again begin to appreciate the little things that we somehow came to ignore, from a blazing sunset sky to a beautiful fall day. We allow our hearts to be touched. We somehow pull ourselves up off the floor of our own despair and toss down the cloak of sadness and self-pity that we’ve been wearing. We let the light replace the darkness, and once again, we begin to live.

I don’t know that there is a set mourning period, or a length of time that we’re supposed to give ourselves to grieve the loss of a loved one. I do know that since losing my mom, I’ve gained more weight than I did while I was pregnant with each of my kids. Obviously, I’m an emotional eater. I know that I became very good at hiding my grief and sadness, plastering a smile on my face when all I wanted to do was hide at home, away from the world. I also know if not for the continued love and support I receive from my husband, my kids, my sister, and an incredible circle of friends, I would have allowed myself to drown in my own dark pool of self-pity.

I’m not ashamed to admit that the pain of losing my mom is still sometimes as fresh as if it happened just yesterday, and I still have days when I cry for absolutely no reason other than the fact that I miss her so terribly. I cry not only for the loss of my mom but for that lost sense of family; the threads of family that bound us together have now unraveled and become so tangled, it will never be the same again.

But, as we all know, whether it’s one step at a time or one big, giant leap, life does, in fact, go on. It will do this with us or without us and we can choose to participate or watch from the sidelines as it passes us by. I have so much to be thankful for and I, for one, am ready to embrace my now readjusted life.