While my loss was the death of my son by suicide, yours could be the loss of a loved one to mental illness or addiction. It could be loss of a marriage or a even a job.
After my son Charles died I would hear people talk about moving forward. Early in the grief process, I couldn’t fathom what that meant or what it would look like. Despite my tragedy, the world lunged forward with annoying consistency and continued to spin on its axis while I struggled with the steps on how to take a shower and get dressed.
At first, moving forward was out of obligation and I was stuck in a slower moving dimension. Accepting the loss was the most difficult part and what made those first days, weeks, and months the hardest.
I didn’t want it to be true. Some part of me struggled to hold onto the before so I wouldn’t have to face this after part. Sleep allowed me to forget. Awake meant reality and pain.
Moving forward doesn’t mean leaving your loved one behind or abandoning their memory. It means accepting the death of someone or something you loved. It’s natural to fight this transition and even get angry at it. It’s natural to want to push it away.
Eventually, I learned to walk along beside grief, incorporating it into my life. And then one day looking back I noticed I had moved forward. I learned to feel the feelings and from there I learned to love, live, and laugh again.
