Does it go away?

Does grief ever go away? A question I have been asked many times, and a question that I have thought about a lot.  My short answer is no, I don’t think it does.  Ask anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one or friend and they will tell you that there are still moments in which they wish their loved one was there.  Although their open wound of grief is gone, there is still a scar.

In today’s hustle and bustle atmosphere, grief seems to be another one of those things that people expect for us to just get over like we would get over our favorite tv show being cancelled.  People today are moving so fast that after the what I call “lasagna period” is over they forget that we can still be suffering.  We forget that women used to dress in black for at least a year and a day if not the rest of their lives.  In today’s present time, we seem like we’re expected to go on with life as if our world has not turned upside down.  One thing that I have found important is that we find the people who are going to remember that sometimes the moments are going to come that grief is going to take over, even years after our losses.

For every dance performance and important life event from the day my father passed away to the day my mother died, she would write in a note or in the program ad she would buy for me “Your stars are shining for you tonight.” That was her way of reminding me that I had one, then two angels watching over me throughout every important moment that my father and grandmother missed.  Most events when I would read her words, I would think “Thanks Mom” for remembering.  Sometimes, her note would cause me to take pause and really think about the people that weren’t there.  These moments would sometimes hit me out of nowhere because grief never goes away.  I have learned how to manage the pain when it decides to flare up.  Grief does not go away, and I hope that in the following posts that I can talk about ways to help when your scars decide to show up out of nowhere.