Thank you so much for sharing about this here, friend. I’m so sorry that life has been so heavy and painful for you, especially since you lost your grandfather. Losing someone we love dearly definitely changes lives. There is a before and an after, and as much as we wish to have the possibility to go back to the way things were, it is the burden of grief but to face that painful reality over and over. You said it’s so well: it’s not just about the loss itself - it’s also about processing the transition it creates in our life, whether it’s right after learning about the loss or even years later.
When losing people I love, it has always been personally a storm to walk through. Like a major, brutal storm that would affect me and people in my life in ways that seem impossible to control. You see everything happening, you feel it all very deeply, but you can only try to ride the wave as best as you can. It is hard to face the reality of death, and to be unexpectedly forced to embrace life without the presence of some people. There is both this need to compose with their absence, yet at the same time to do what we can to live a life that we would love. But it often feels like there’s just an impossible contradiction between those two realities - in practice, it feels wrong to have the possibility to breathe when others don’t anymore.
Then grief hits like unexpected waves that make you feel like the two steps forward you took would be now cancelled by ten steps backwards. It’s so hard to deal with the heaviness of silence and emptiness that losses leave us with. It feels as if time has stopped - or at least a part of our life did. It makes it hard to put the pieces of the puzzle together again and to feel like jumping on the train of life.
I feel with you and with all my heart the heartbreak you’ve been through when you lost your grandfather, and how much pain it has brought into your life. It’s just hard to keep up with life when someone you love is not by your side anymore. It feels safer to stay immobile somehow, to allow time to freeze in our life not just temporarily. The pain that you feel is at the measure of the love you have for him, of the beautiful connection that existed between you two. It’s a beautiful yet heavy legacy to carry on with you - now mostly on your own shoulders.
Grief shapes our lives and changes us, but I can assure you though that something different can come out of it. Not a low version of life where you would be stuck in pain, and not a version where you would simply move on and forget - you can’t forget anyway. There is a middle path, in between, where it is possible to keep embracing life while honoring the memory of your grandfather and the people you lost at the same time. It takes time to be forged, to be cultivated too, and for some of us it takes reaching out and receiving support - from family/friends or a therapist - to get through it. But as I am personally on that path now after drowning into feelings of guilt and emptiness due to grief, I simply wanted to send some hope your way that it can get better, and life can feel worthy again.
The people you lost may not be present physically, but their love keeps shining through you. There is no distance of time and place that will ever take away from you the beauty of their heart, of their love and care for you, nor the love you feel for them. It is an integral part of you and of your story. It is a strength, a power in itself, a beautiful motivator that goes beyond death - as your grandfather and the people who love you would certainly wish for you to live a life that fulfills you.
The version of you that you knew before your grandpa’s passing may be gone, but you are not just an empty shell now. You lived, still. You survived, you coped, you tried. You may not be where you want to be now, but you never ceased to live and do what you could to push through. That is also a significant part of your story and not to be overlooked. It feels like being empty, but what it tells you is also that you have a world of possibility ahead to re-create yourself in light of what you’ve been through, of the pain you’ve been trying to compose with. You are not broken, you are not defeated. You are a painter trying to find the right colors to add to their own life. It’s okay if it takes time, it’s okay if it requires help. You are alive, my friend. There is more to see, more to unfold, more to experience in this life. A part of you is gone or changed, but you are here, and the very breath in your lungs may be one of your superpowers right now.
I believe in you. 