Grieving someone who’s still alive

We’ve all experienced loss in our lives

Some things that we lose have inevitable endings

But knowing something has an end doesn’t make the loss any easier to handle

It doesn’t change the fact that one day, we won’t have what once was

What is can become isn’t with something as swift as a breath

I imagine grieving someone who’s still alive is what happens when your loved one has dementia

The person sitting on your living room couch starts to look a lot different with each passing day

The body you used to hug 

That once made you feel warm and loved becomes estranged and cold

The person you once knew is no longer there

You look into their eyes grasping for memory, waiting for something to just help them remember

But you’re still waiting

Full disclosure, I’ve never had a close family member with dementia

But as I journey with my husband through the end-of-life journey of one of his loved ones

I imagine it might feel a bit similar

She’s walking, talking, living and breathing right before our eyes

But she’s not herself 

It already feels like we’ve lost her

She’s not gone, she is still here

But is feels like it'll turn to was before we'll even have enough time to process it all

So here we are

Waiting 

As if the fragility of life wasn't already a trigger for my anxiety 

Every day we go through the motions

We laugh, tell jokes, buy groceries, fill up on gasoline

But when she comes to mind, we can’t help but sigh

A sigh of disbelief of what's to come 

A sigh of heartache

And grief becomes the friend that feels good to have around because it reminds you that you're human, that you have the capacity to care

To feel

To love 

But it's also the friend that you don't want around for too, too long

We’re reminded that she is will turn into she was so much sooner than we’d ever want 

Not that we ever wanted to see that day

Death is inevitable, everyone knows that

It feels silly to be ignorant, to pretend that death is not a looming reality for everyone

But the death of a loved one never fails to shock

It always finds a way

No matter how much you mentally prepared yourself for that day when those conversations become one-sided, not because they're being petty or because their phone's on airplane mode

Oh God, how that day will hurt

And so will every day after that when you just wish Sent would turn to Seen 

And 

... 

would at least mean they're still alive

Soon, she’ll be gone

We won’t expect any long texts about the political state of the Philippines

We won't expect any calls to ask which party we're voting for in the next election

We won’t expect her to interrupt prayer times with a “AND WE PRAY THAT PACQUIAO WILL WIN!!”

Just because we won't be able to expect anything anymore

Life is never long enough

The life of a loved one will always feel too short

We can’t help but feel robbed of the time we could have, should have, would have, no matter how good or bad the prognosis is

I’d say we should stop wasting time, that we should make the most of our time left

But I don’t think the meaningfulness of time was ever meant to be tied to how “well” we spend it

There's no “productive” way to grieve

I even learned the hard way that telling someone “it’s okay to cry” (and expecting them to cry) isn’t really helpful though I thought it was at first

How we grieve I don't think is important

That we grieve at all is

Each of us find our own ways to grieve

Whether dead or alive, it really sucks to lose someone

And sometimes in that process we lose ourselves

I can only hope and pray

That if we lose ourselves in grief

That on our way back

Through that painful journey of piecing our lives back together

We're able to grab onto something stronger than ourselves

The day when she is becomes she was will be really, really hard

We’ll want to dig up the blueprints for the time machine we doodled as kids 

We’ll replay every memory we have of her as much as we can until they become tattered and worn out like old VHS tapes

Stop

Rewind

Play

Again and again, until we can’t remember anymore 

When that day comes and the days that follow that really, really hard day

We’ll just need to hold on to Who was, is and is to come 

And pray that He’ll carry the weight of our grief, that He will hold us up until we are becomes we were

When that really, really hard day becomes someone else's 

And we forget what grief ever felt like