i am very luck to say that i went twenty five years of my life without ever experiencing grief. i have met people who have experienced in at a cruelly young age, essentially robbing them of their innocence and naïveté to the reality and unfairness of life. however, that does not mean that grief does not hurt any more when you experience it at a younger age versus your 20s, 30s, or older. speaking for myself, i am grateful that it came to me at an age where i am a bit more emotionally regulated than i was in, say, eighth grade.
grief came to me in the form of my best friend’s mom dying from a brief and intense battle with cancer. she was diagnosed in the beginning of 2023 and by the beginning of this year, she had been dead for months. it is not an exaggeration when i tell you that no one thought she was going to die. despite the severity of her diagnosis, everyone (myself included) was convinced that she was going to persevere and come out on the other side of this horribly terrible hand she had been dealt. she was always extremely self-sufficient and resilient, qualities that she passed down to my best friend and that i see reflected in her every day.
i was in the middle of the street when my friend called me and told me her mother had passed and i felt like the rug had been ripped right out from under me. the words coming out of her mouth sounded like a foreign language and for the first few weeks, i did not believe it. to be honest with you, seven months later, i still do not believe it. it feels like she just went somewhere far away for a work conference or a vacation. it does not register in my head that i will never see her again, that that meal we had in august 2024 was the last one we would ever share, that i will never see any new photos of her, that i will have to remember her longer that i knew her, and so forth. when my friend sent me her obituary, it made me surprisingly angry. i felt like i was reading someone else’s obituary, someone that was not her mom. i remember feeling angry that her photo was there, her name and birthday and death date, but that it was not her. it felt as though a mistake had been made and the funeral director carelessly attached her photo and name to the obituary of someone else. of course, this was not the case.
the aphorisms, although i really hate them, are true.
“this too shall pass.”
“grief is love with nowhere to go.”
“the only way out is through.”
that last one is the one that has been on a constant loop in my head since she died. in the months following, i have been faced with a number of personal challenges in addition to navigating grief for the first time that seemed to be never-ending. march was particularly a horrible month for me (as it tends to be, to be honest). this winter a grueling, and march tested me in ways that i thought i could not get through. in particular, i had a lot of high-stakes projects thrown my way for law school that all fell within the same week at the end of march. i spent the whole month of march short of losing my mind over these projects. the entire time i kept repeating to myself “the only way out is through.”
i am convinced that i do not have a “fight or flight” response, because i never choose fight. my response is always to run. it’s a lot easier to run away than to stare what i am running from in the face — to actually look at it and let it consume me to the point where i have no other choice but to march forward through it. as i kept repeating “the only way out is through” as i was going through these projects, i realized it was a lot easier to get them done. i always feel a really deep sense of regret and failure when i run from something instead of just toughing it out until it’s over. i always feel disappointed in myself that i took the “easier route” instead of doing what i need to get done. although it felt terrible while doing, the sense of relief that washed over me when the calendar turned to april 1 was like no other.
i keep this sentiment in my head while i am trying to navigate my grief. this is the first time i have ever felt grief, but it certainly will not be my last. it will come back to me again and again, more powerful than ever. i know it is going to hurt a lot more. i know it is going to feel like the weight of it is too much to bear. i know i am going to want to run away from it as fast as my body will physically let me. i’ll want to scream until my throat bleeds. i’d rather hurt myself than look my grief in its face.
but i know running is not an option for anything. i might have to kick and scream and claw and crawl on my hands and knees through my grief, but at least it will take me to the other side of it. it will never go away, but it will take me to a side where it doesn’t hurt so bad. a side where i don’t have such a visceral reaction when i think of it. a side where i can speak the names of the loved ones i have lost without feeling like i am choking to death on them.
the only way out is through.
the only way out is through.
the only way out is through.
i will tell myself this.
yours,
jude