Seven Weeks

Disclaimer: this is a bit raw, more than a bit sad, and a lot emotional. It's about my feelings, which these days are mostly sad, with a bit of hope mixed in.

Tonight marks seven weeks since I lost my little sister Maggie to suicide. It stings to type that, to think that. It's a harsh new reality for me that still steals my breath in the worst way and at the most random times.

Today at work things were busy but I got a lot done and things went smoothly for the most part. I chatted with coworkers, checked things off my to-do list, even tidied my desk before I left for the night. I met up with a coworker for dinner after work and we enjoyed really great conversation, we laughed and I gave her a hug when we left. I texted my parents, sharing how happy I was to be making friends here in my new home after a few months of living here.
As I was driving home a song came on my playlist that I've listened to probably a hundred times in the last seven weeks but for some unknown reason this time it made me think about missing Maggie more than it ever did before, and as I pulled my car into a parking spot at my apartment I began to fall apart. And so I sat in my car and cried for about fifteen minutes before I decided to go into my apartment, where my roommate greeted me with a hug and a large amount of understanding. I am so thankful for her.

This week is Thanksgiving. And I don't want to do this week. I don't want to face my first holiday without one of my most favorite people in the whole world. I don't want the head count to be five instead of six. I've never spent a major holiday apart from anyone in my immediate family; we've just always been close and always prioritized family time and always been fortunate to be together.

In the past I've been like a little kid in my levels of excitement for holidays. I love all the cheesy holiday-specific products that I know are mostly designed so companies make more money but they feel like extra little celebrations to me and so I buy some of them anyways (the Halloween cookie cut-outs, for example, with pumpkin stamps on them!)

And so this year, this week, I'm feeling like I am caught in a terrible, beautiful, overwhelming stormy sea of emotions. I like holidays, I love family time. And yet I can't help but feel the ache of loss to a deeper degree as I face this first holiday without Mag. And I know it's not truly without her, because she'll be in our thoughts and our hearts and our conversation and I hope and pray we will even feel her presence. But it'll be without her tangible company, and that thought is enough to break me down in the middle of a drive home from work, in the middle of typing this blog post. How do I live my life, really live it, while allowing myself to experience this grief? How do I seize each moment with my loved ones who are still physically here with me, make new memories, and yet feel the emptiness in my heart that will always be Maggie's place? I don't know. So far, I'm taking it moment by moment. Let myself be happy for the lovely dinner conversation. Let myself break down by the reminder of the loss. Let myself be comforted by the hug from my roommate. Let myself laugh at the funny internet video. Let myself cry again as I write about my life.

Feeling lots of feelings isn't something new for me. I've long been "in touch" with my emotions, long been someone who feels things deeply, and wants to. But experiencing this level of negative emotions is certainly a new frontier for me, grief is new, and loss is largely new to me. And I recognize how blessed a life I have lived to be able to say that this is new, however terrible it is.

So even though a big part of me really doesn't want to do this week, I know that this week is going to happen with or without my permission. And there are good moments to be felt in this week, I know that too. There are memories to be made with family and friends. There will be sadness, and there will be happy times too, because I will be with people I care about who care about me. Ben will make me smile and Katie will make me laugh and Mom and Dad will make me feel loved, and time with my friends will make it easier to breathe in the moments we are talking about their lives, their challenges, their joys. And so my game plan for this week, and for life in general right now, is to try to embrace as much of it as possible. Remembering Maggie hurts, and feeling her absence is the worst feeling I've ever felt. But I don't want to forget her, and even the memories that cut through me like a knife also make me smile. It feels right to remember her, to keep her spirit close to mine, to think about her and to talk about her. (And sometimes to talk to her, thanks for passing along those messages, Jesus.)

A couple of months ago I started this "dare" from a book I was reading that challenged me to list 1,000 gifts from God. The author explains that for her, discovering more joy in life came from discovering more about God's goodness, which came from purposefully noting God's many gifts to her in her every day life. There's a lot more to it, but that's the basic idea, and I loved it. I started listing and the more I looked the more I saw, and it was fun. Since losing Maggie, I've been taking a break from my list. I've been thankful for many things in the past seven weeks, and I've thanked those around me and even God for some of those things. But I couldn't bring myself to start my list back up again because it felt insincere, no matter how thankful I do feel, to pursue joy when I am feeling so much sorrow. To thank God when I am still confused and angry at Him for letting Maggie leave, for not answering "yes" to my desperate prayers that night for her to be found safe, and if not safe, at the very least alive. But I've recently remembered that my God can handle it if I am simultaneously confused and angry and sad and also thankful. I can be sad and happy and everything in between, and I can be it all in this moment, and the next, and this week. It's exhausting, and there will be moments when I can't handle feeling it all, and I'll just block it out. And that will be okay, too.

And so in the spirit of embracing this messy life, here is a short sample of things I'm thankful for from the past seven weeks:
1) Cheryl driving 5 hours in the middle of the night so that I could be with my family as soon as possible after hearing the worst news
2) My parents, and my whole family, being surrounded by loving close friends in our darkest hours, days, and weeks
3) Friends from different chapters of my life, different states and different countries reaching out to let me know that I have been in their thoughts and prayers
4) A boss who not only let me take a week off with no notice and insisted I not make up the hours, but also told me to choose when I came back to work, baked me homemade bread, wrote me a handwritten card, and still asks each week how I'm doing
5) Coworkers who bought me flowers and cried when they first talked to me about Maggie
6) Getting to go home for Halloween and help Katie do her makeup and walk around to the first half of the houses with her
7) Having a dream in which Maggie hugged me and told me she loved me
8) Wearing Maggie's shoes and feeling a little bit closer to her
9) Planning hang outs with friends
10) Remembering the last time I saw Maggie, the weekend we shared a bed and I hugged her and snuggled with her and laughed with her and even counted gifts with her and read her part of my list, highlighting ones that included her
11) Warm blankets as the weather gets cold
12) Pictures capturing hundreds of moments of Maggie and I together over the years
13) Being able to text Ben and Katie and Mom and Dad and hear from them every week
14) Coming home from work each day to a roommate who is also one of my best friends
And much more.

I know this post was a lot to share with the world wide web. Lately I've been reading blog posts from others who have lost loved ones, and their vulnerability and heart-wrenching honest words filled with hope mixed with sorrow have been a comfort to me. My hope is that in sharing this openly that someone else may feel less alone as they travel their own unique journey with grief. There are many characteristics of Maggie that I hope to make more a part of who I am going forward- one of them being her willingness to share her struggles whenever she felt it might help someone else to feel less alone in their pain. <3