Losing someone who is close to you is hard to contemplate. Imagining such a thing happening would be hard. All the pain and mixed emotions one goes through can throw one off, as well as the people around you. So could the constant pity from people of your everyday life.

I am well acquainted with the deaths of people who were close to me. I was only 8 when I lost my mom. I was young, but I was old enough to understand what was going on. It was a lot to deal with at such a young age. My whole world was turned upside down and I didn’t really know how to feel at first. I was kind of lucky, though, because I got to grieve over the summer in the comfort of my own home. I didn’t have to worry about anything except trying to heal.

Then when school came back around I had to deal with other kids, their questions and their expressions of condolences. Hearing it over and over can really drive a person crazy. I believe that it makes the process of healing slower because it brings up painful memories.

I didn’t really experience all the supposed seven stages of grief when my mom died, but I did when I just recently lost my cousin in July. The seven stages of grief are: 1) shock and denial 2) pain and guilt 3) anger and bargaining 4) depression, reflection, and loneliness 5) the upward turn 6) reconstruction and working 7) acceptance and hope. How you feel doesn’t necessarily go in this order. It varies from people to people. I think his death was somewhat harder because he saw me grow up and he was like a brother to me. Losing one important person is hard enough, but losing two is somewhat unbearable.

When I lost my mom and my cousin the main thing that I wanted to happen was for things to get back to normal. I think that’s what most people want, normality. Regrettably, that is not what happens.

I find that people try to put someone in a box cut off from the rest of the world. I understand that they are trying to protect them from getting hurt again, but I don’t want to be smothered with compassion. I get the fact that people are just trying to be polite and show that they care; still it gets to be too much. I’m the type of person who doesn’t like to be pitied. If I want to talk about how I’m feeling I will.  Yeah, what happened to me was horrible, but I don’t let it define who I am as a person.

However, some people like to be pitied. I assume they like the feeling of someone giving them a lot of attention. It could also be because maybe they feel like they don’t want to be alone. The comfort that they’re feeling from other people might be replacing the comfort they used to feel from that person that they lost. If those are the reasons people like being pitied I guess I can understand why. In the end losing someone hurts, but I feel like when it happens it makes people stronger, not weaker. The thing that has made me so strong and has willed me to keep going is my family. I feel like I have to be strong for them and help keep them as close as possible.