Grief is a Desert

Grief is a desolate place. Even though I’ve never crossed any desert alone, that’s what it felt like in my world. Vast, expansive spaces of emptiness in which all sorts and kinds of emotions swam, threatening to swallow me whole. A tempest in barren land with relentless crushing pain that felt like it would never let up.

There were intervals of unbelievable forgetfulness that my sister wouldn't walk through the kitchen door again. The remembrance of which awakened the raw pain that seemed to have only taken a nap. It's inconceivable that I can watch that time as if I'm watching a movie. I guess that’s what it condenses into. Frames of time through the eternal reel, yet in the thick of that pain, the only thing I could isolate was knowing that she was dead to this world.

Nothing else, but the all-consuming pain that ingrained itself deep into my bones existed till I felt like one long, tall lump of pain.

It is such a personal yet universal experience. Barely three months after her passing, I met a girl who also felt the loss of a sibling even more recent than mine. A magnetic pull threw us into conversations about them, swapping stories of the little things we did to wade through the days. We dived into lengthy stories about their illnesses without feeling like weaklings or burdens in the release of emotions that were controlled around most people. There was permission to even cry without the weight of self-consciousness.

We spoke of the weird, empty glaring space that trails behind the sudden physical absence of a sibling one spent an entire lifetime with. That shared experience tied us together in a particular knot. It wasn’t long though before we realised how differently we carried not only our pain but the concept of what death is. We were in each other’s lives for as long as we needed to be. We would go our separate ways as if it were the most natural thing under the sun.

Even when you are surrounded by well-meaning people, grieving the loss of a loved one is the loneliest of experiences.

Slowly, as time returned to its normal rhythm of nights for dreaming and days for waking, I began to smile at some memories that popped into my mind. Intimate conversations we’ve had where I could hear her voice as clearly as if she were next to me. I saw her dancing; I could hear her laughter and even her smile. I’d find myself smiling and then things turned messy to snorts and salty lips before I realised that tears had returned.

In the first few months, the hardest part was thinking of her three children growing up motherless in this hard world. A brutal place even for adults. I couldn’t for the life of me think about how broken they must have felt. To have been a helpless witness to my mother’s pain and who in turn felt helpless is nothing I can describe. Through it all, a part of me will always marvel at her strength. I’d wonder what it was that made people behave so differently towards death, grief and life after.

There have been many painful stages to fumble through. It's her illness, though, that was hardest to sieve through the screens of my mind. She went through her own type of crucifixion, and I couldn’t fathom why, it’s clear what Jesus’ pain was for.

I would worry about how we'd explain to the adults her children will one day be about what exactly killed their mother. And why they were not allowed to see her in the hospital before she died. I’d worry that her last girl, a seven-year-old would forget her face, voice and everything about her in the mist of time. That their mother, my sister would become just a shadow for them in time.

But all things must pass away. As do we.

As did my worries and everything else I clutched onto in my small world. I trod a new path of learning to let go. No one is motherless in this world. Nobody belongs to anyone in this world. No one owns this world or much of it.

And none can tell me that I didn't feel her presence. Or the comfort that came with it in the first few days after her voyage into the beyond. Now, looking back at the landscape of the last two years, a deep and profound change has settled on the family. I chuckle at the thought of seeing in my mind certain family members licking their wounds. In quite corners like dogs do. I don’t know if any family is ever left unchanged.

In my own life, her passage through time has touched me in a way that has an added richness and clarity that wasn’t there before.

It is at once both a beautiful yet puzzling thought that life does go on after someone’s death.

I see my sister most nights in my dreams and she’s just fine. There are gradual acceptance and gratitude that she was here at all.

There’s an added layer to the depth of love that now seems to shimmer and shine. A rousing from the lull of going through the motions of life like a routine. Moving through the days half asleep. My faith has opened a door in search of a path that leads to springs of living, healing waters. The kind to quell the eternal thirst for life’s never-ending questions