I have the greatest friends and family.
I think it's finally time I write about this even though it has nothing to do with beauty. The last two weeks have felt like a year. I have been on an emotional roller coaster of heart break and sadness. I cried for 7 days straight. Just when I thought I couldn't cry any more, I would start back up again. (Eye puffery eye cream from Origins helped with the dark circles and puffiness. There is your beauty tip)
I lost my friend Mark on September 30. It's all very complicated and it might as well been a crappy movie but I don't want to go in to the details of it all because most people wouldn't understand. In the end, it doesn't matter because Mark is gone. I can't call him up and tell him I miss him. I don't get to tell him how much he means to me. I can't tell him how amazing his family is and how much I loved spending time with them and helping them out while they were trying to get his funeral ready. I kept wishing he was there through it all. I'm not going to see his truck parked in front of my house to go to the movies or anywhere else. We don't get to play golf anymore or sit and talk for hours or trade massages. We can't make fun of each other anymore and I don't get to tell him to stop bringing up awkward topics. I don't get to hear his voice or his contagious laugh. He has definitely left a huge hole in my life--more than I realized he would.
However, I know that I will see Mark again after I die. I know that our lives on earth are temporary and I really believe that my perspective is going to change once I am gone from the earth too. It will seem like it went by so fast because time will be so different. I can picture Mark looking down on a crying me and saying, "It's ok Trace, I'll see you in like an hour!" --just like a parent would tell their small children when leaving them with the sitter.
As much as I want him to still be here, I am trying to not wish him back. C.S. Lewis said in A Grief Observed, “What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again?”
I know that Mark is in a better place. That sounds so cliche but he really is. He's free from all of the pains of having a body. I don't want him to come and be back in the middle of all of the 'terrible awful' he was in the middle of. It really would be selfish of me to want that.
My perspective has so severely shifted in so many areas that it's kind of overwhelming. Here are some things that I have learned about grief though--because everyone grieves differently which is at the top of my list...
-Grieving is different for everyone.
-Even though it might seem awkward, I want people to acknowledge my grief but only briefly.
-I appreciate the offers of people wanting to do things for me even though I have nothing for them to do.
-It's nice to have a lot of people around but I don't want to have to talk the whole time. I want them to talk to each other more.
-The reason why you take food over to people after a death is because they would forget to eat otherwise
-Tears and emotion come unexpectedly and in waves.
-It's ok to cry.
-Each person has a different purpose on the earth.
I don't know why Mark had to leave the earth when he did but I will miss him terribly. I have never lost anyone this close to me and it's truly surreal. I always think I'm going to wake up from a bad dream or that I somehow got caught in the middle of that movie Sliding Doors--somewhere there is an alternate me living it up and things are perfect and Mark is still alive, right? Hold on to your loved ones a little tighter today because you never know if you're going to see them tomorrow.
