It's Dark Inside

Death is the most life-changing experience. It's universal yet its enormity, its horror, and its finality can never be understood till it comes home. When you lose someone, you die with that person - the life you had with that person dies, a part of you dies, and you carry on living with that dead part inside you. It's a grief that will never go away and it's a grief that no tears or words can comfort or heal. You go on living simply because you have no other choice. It's not because you're brave or because you've gotten over your loss. You NEVER get over your loss simply because your life has changed forever. Things will never be the same again. The thought that you will never see the person again, hear his voice, or touch his hand is a grief that can never be put into words. You discover in how many ways you can miss a person, you discover how much more that person meant to you than you realized when he was alive. You rediscover your Faith which is the realization that Faith doesn't give you what you want from life - it only gives you a little strength to cope when life happens to you. You are completely alone in your grief and you will feel the loneliness most acutely when people surround you after your loss - when they comfort you, when they wipe away your tears, when you have to answer their questions, when you have to function, when the business of living cannot be suspended, when you must push back your grief, act "normal" and carry on living. That's when you realize how tough it is to pick up the million, fragmented, confused, hopeless pieces that your life has become within a fraction of a second and hold them together; you cannot possibly join them back into a whole, so you hold the pieces and you put one step in front of the other and you go on. But for you, it's over - through your smiles, your tears, your memories, your days, and your nights, forever, it will always be dark inside.