The loneliest walk you’ll ever take is the one down the road of grief.
There is goodbye in every hello, just as there is an end in every beginning. We all know that our inevitable finale is to leave this world, and hopefully, we made an impact in this world and will leave it a better place.
Yet, despite d-e.a.t.h being a part of the cycle of life, still, it never fails to tear a hole in our hearts-whenever we lose someone we love. It’s just one of the hardest things humans have to go through — to grieve a departed loved one.
D-e.a.t.h leaves a heartbreak difficult to heal. Never again seeing one’s loved ones and never hearing one’s voice makes the process of mourning all the more devastating.
A woman seeking a piece of advice in Reddit, an online forum community, experienced losing her cherished best friend. She was mourning over her d-e.a.t.h and turned to Reddit, looking for someone who could give her a piece of advice in order to heal from the devastating reality… that she would never be able to hug her best friend ever again.
“My friend d-i.e.d. I don’t know what to do.”
A lot of Redditors shared their own experiences of losing a loved one, most of them expressed their condolences towards the anonymous woman. Among the many responses received by the woman’s post, the comment of an old man confessed answered with an honest and beautiful answer.
Here’s the old man’s response to the Redditor’s unfortunate circumstance, which amassed the highest upvote.
“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.”
“I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love d-i.e.s, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to ‘not matter.’ I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it.”
“Scars are a testimony of life. Scars are a testament that I can deeply love and live deeply, that I can cut or even erode and that I can heal, continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.”
“As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.”
“In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, or even months, you will notice that the waves are still 100 meters high, but they continue to diverge. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out.
But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.”
“Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself.
And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.”
“Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of love. And lots of shipwrecks.”
The d-e.a.t.h of a loved one would leave a pain that does not heal completely, but the love you formed and shared would always leave you a memory that no one can erase
The ones we love never truly leave us. Mahatma Gandhi once said: ‘a coward is someone who incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.’ So be proud of the scars your heart has endured, it only goes to show how much love your heart could give; it only goes to show how your heart never gets tired of loving.