Hello hivers! How are you all doing today? This is my first time blogging in this community. I hope you find it worthy.
I heard something yesterday that left me heartbroken and sad. It is one of those casual things people say but hurt and cut deep if one had experienced loss of a loved one. I don't understand why people think the age of people we lose should reduce the pain we feel.
There is a woman right next to my store who has been gone for months. She just came back from the village. She lost both parents within a space of six months . She lost her Mother two days to her father's funeral. They had to bury them the same day.
You can imagine the level of that grief! Her body and emotions shot down and she became ill. She is looking pale and have lost so much weight. She is just a shadow of herself . Grief have a way of shrinking people. She still cries when she talks about them.
But what really pierced my heart the hardest was when I overheard one of her own friends saying ' why is she still crying?, are they not old?'
I felt that deeply because someone said the same thing to me this time last year when my grandma was admitted at the hospital. This person said I shouldn't stress myself or feel sad about her health condition because she is old and had lived her life.
Does her age wipe off the love,the memories and the all the roles and impact she played and made in my life?
We can't stop loving our parents or grandparents because they are old or of certain age. We don't stop feeling their absence because they have lived long.
We cannot erase their presence and how they showed up for us just because they have been alive for many years.
Grief doesn't ask how old someone was.
Grief just shows up.
We grieve because they matter. We grieve because we love them ....and because they shape who we are.
Sometimes, they might be the only soft and safe space we have in this difficult world.
When someone loses a loved one, no matter the age of the person. Let them cry! Let them heal without hurting them more with your words of 'how old'.
These words are like daggers to already wounded heart. It hurts more because, it is usually the people close to us who make such utterances .
We can do better.
Let people grieve .
Let people mourn.
We are allowed to feel the totality of it and heal gradually. Even if the person who died was 150years old.
Grief is no joke.
May we not become so hardened to lack empathy for someone else's pain.
Thank you for reading. Have a lovely day.