Goodbye Buddy

Death is an inevitable end to every life. Sometimes death comes after eighty years, five children and a wife of fifty years. Sometimes death comes after only two breaths and one smile. Sometimes death falls upon us at the worst time and other times we expect it. No matter how ready anyone thinks they are, death hurts. Every death close to us and every death somewhat distanced from our immediate lives takes a toll on our hearts and crashes our worlds. Sometimes it is easy to recover from and sometimes it is like a baseball shattering a window- something we think will never mend back together. 

Death of a loved one, death of a beloved pet, the death of a next door neighbors’ pet that you have become best buddies with, the death of a friend you have not seen in ten years. Every death is hard to accept, and we all try to understand it, live with it, be okay with it. The one thing no one tries to do is say that it is okay to be devastated, hurt, upset, mad even. People cry, people take a day off of work, they go to a funeral, sometimes they say goodbye, but not one admits that their life has halted for a minute. The people we meet in our everyday lives all create who we are. When someone who was instrumental in creating the person we have become today dies, it is hard. 

Maybe life will go on and maybe everything will get better; maybe we can think about all the great moments we have had; maybe we can remember the smile or the energy or the happiness. Maybe we can try and recover from the pain that has ripped a whole in our heart that seems like it will never heal. 

I am one of those people that tries to make everyone else feel better. I am one of those people that says it will be okay; that says you just have to get up and work through it.

What I never say, is what I wish someone would say to me or I could say to someone hurting- It is harder to say the truth than try and bandage every wound, even though the wound may not be bandage-able. When you cannot bandage a wound you have to let it heal on its own; sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes weeks, and sometimes there will always be a scar that can be obvious or may be more hidden. 

I have been told I have my grandfather’s laugh. I have my parent’s looks. I have acquired my nana’s ability to hoard (not nearly as bad as her or my father). I have acquired my father’s love for antiques and cheap treasures. I have acquired my aunt and uncles humor. I learned how to build a tree house with the man across the street at my grandma’s house. My teacher in elementary school perpetuated my need to be a liked student. Being bullied in middle school helped me learn how to hide my feelings well. My friends from college have shaped me into an obsessive reader. My dance teacher taught me valuable lessons about everyday life. Gymnastics helped me meet some of my best friends. Dance taught me how to calm myself down even though I had too much energy. 

Everything we do and everyone we meet has some kind of impact on our lives. Whether that impact is profound or small it does not matter. Without these people in my life I would not be half of the person I am today. Maybe I would have been a better person or maybe I would have been richer, or maybe I would have fallen in with the wrong crowd and maybe I would not be alive today. Losing anyone who has touched and shaped my life is hard. 

Even losing my hermit crab when I was 10 was hard. My hermit crab Hermy was the first animal other than a fish that I had. Hermy taught me how to be responsible for another life. Hermy gave me a friend when I felt like I did not have one. 

It is okay to lose it and cry. It is okay to close ourselves off for a little bit, until we are ready to stand on our own. When someone dies, even a first pet, we cannot always just get up and work through it, we cannot always just move on. 

I wish everyone was happy all the time; I wish I was happy all the time. Sadly that is not the case and can never be the case; it is the only healthy way to live. Sometimes it is easier to try and make everyone try and feel better than to tell them maybe it has to hurt for a while. There is not an answer to everything and there will never be a way to fix everything. It is hard to accept and I am still trying to learn to understand it, but being able to be sad, is a gift that we many times over look. Being able to remember everything that makes us miss someone and everything that makes us cry for them, that is a gift I never want to lose.