Please, cry about it…..

Cry about it…..

04/04/2019: The phone rang early in the morning, and I heard it clearly through the fog of my light-sleeper brain. I wondered who would call so early. I left it on voicemail to catch it. Well, it kept ringing, so I rolled off the bed and answered it.

I froze at the sound of the voice on the line when my older brother told me that my father had passed away in his sleep. 

 I saw my father on my visit home a month before, and he appeared to be well, and to me, this came out of nowhere. No words could be found to describe the pain in my chest.

Grief is not linear. It is challenging every single day and night. 

Losing a loved one is extremely painful and never goes away. One day, you could be walking, enjoying the day, and out of thin air, you get body slammed with debilitating pain. You can’t breathe, you can’t think your way out of it. You can only sit in pain and cry. You can cry about it.

I give you the full permission to cry about it.

Give yourself the grace to do so.

Grief is not one-size-fits-all; some may get angry when others want to be alone in utter silence. For many others, staying away from the thoughts in our heads and the sorrows in our hearts is the best way.

Please, I implore you not to dwell in that space for long because it is a sure path to death. We often focus solely on the physical aspect of it and forget that you can be dead before you die. 

To love is to be alive, to have loved and lost is humbling, but to have never loved is a tragedy. We are born surrounded by love and grace, we grow up with love (sometimes misguided) and people around to guide us and serve us. 

The memories are infused in the fibers of who we are, woven in the tapestry of our experiences, whether personal or shared. We can make a new one, but never delete the others. Every single encounter is an opportunity to grow and build memories.

Imagine losing a friend, but you share DNA; you are bonded, a sibling, a parent.

All the memories, all the adventures, the laughter, the tears, the peace.

When they leave this place, we feel so many things, so many emotions. Those get jumbled, and wherever you look, there is no relief.

To this day, I am still grieving, not in the ways the world can see. I carry my deads with me, within me, and love them and pray that they help me be better and give me strength to keep on swimming. 

It’s ok to cry about it!

 It is ok to cry! 

It is ok! 

To cry is ok! 

To cry about it is ok!