grief.

I want to talk about grief and I want to talk about the phrase “it gets better with time.”

When somebody dies, you get every person in your life telling you that. They say that over time, you’ll feel better. They also say things like “your dad loved you,” as if I didn’t already know that. I know that sometimes it is people’s initial reactions and they don’t know what else to say…but trust me. I don’t need some person that never came over during my dad’s illness to tell me that my dad loved me as if I doubted that.

What they don’t tell you is that by “it gets better” they actually mean that things this way—without him—begin to normalize because the world around you continues on and everybody else forgets it even happened unless you bring it up…which is also why you avoid bringing it up in serious discussions. Sometimes you’ll have an oddly quiet day because you’re remembering the fact that you’ll live longer without your father than with him but you’ll tell the people around you that “it’s just one of those days” because you don’t want to bring anybody down. And let's face it, nobody wants you to do it either.

What they don’t tell you is that you sometimes have to strain to remember his voice or what he looked like before he was sick. Or that those memories with him growing up were more than just vague figments that you struggle to hold onto. Nobody tells you these things because nobody wants to admit that they sometimes struggle to remember the little things that made up that person because time has started to pass so quickly.

I don’t think you ever really forget, but it's jarring to wake up and start your day as if everything is normal. And it takes until you’re starting up your car for you to remember that today is his birthday and you cannot just ring him up anymore.

My dad got sick when I was eighteen. When I was nineteen he had passed away. It’s weird to think about it all. About how by the time I pass away I’ll probably have spent more time without him than with him. How all my memories with him will be from when I was growing up, but none from the years I’ll remember more vividly. I think people don’t tell you this because it sounds so incredibly messed up, you know? Everybody around you has these vivid memories of him because they got him for a large portion of their life. But when you lose somebody while you’re so young the reality is that everything begins to fade and you have to grasp at anything you can find to serve as reminders.

Life spins on and you grow up. You graduate college and you get a job. You get married and have kids. You move to another country and maybe even learn another language. All of that without that person around…all of that without one of the people that shaped your entire being. Eventually, so many of your memories become ones without him and that becomes the norm. The normal becomes spending countless hours trying to fit him into those new memories…trying to imagine what it was like if he was there. But sometimes that becomes too painful and you have to turn these thoughts off for another month or two.

Nobody ever tells you this, do they?

And you can’t do anything about it because you can’t sit and wallow every single day about the death of somebody you treasure so dearly. You can’t bring it up in social gatherings or think about it before bed because it’ll consume you. You won’t be able to live the life that he would have wanted you to.

Grief is a funny thing because it's never actually talked about in full honesty. Its always fabricated and sugar coated to make you feel okay when these things happen. So no, it doesn’t get better. Instead, everything fades and you have to block out your real feelings because life goes on, doesn’t it?

But on big moments in life, it is still there and it is still just as prevalent as before. Only this time it feels worse because a week or two has passed and you haven’t thought about him at all and you feel so incredibly guilty for your life moving on and for not being able to remember what his eyes looked like or the way his voice sounded without having to find a visual or audio to go with it. These all become elements that define you.

Nobody ever tells you this, but I’m telling you it now. Death and grief are never-ending and that’s okay. Don’t let anybody tell you that because they’re either lying to themselves so they can cope or they’ve never actually experienced it firsthand. You have every right to bed sad until the day you die and you most likely will. Life will move on, but sometimes you’ll need to stop and remember how the world feels so foreign and strange without them in your life.

When you have lost somebody, it’ll define you for the rest of your life. I don’t doubt that.