It happens in an instant. One moment it’s a sunny and warm morning outside. You’re sipping your coffee sitting at a wooden table in the kitchen and eating your cereal when the text from your mom telling you to call home as soon as you can comes sooner than you were expecting. Or it happens in this instant: You’ve just come home from a dinner out at Hoss’s with a friend and are so full. You get home and decide to watch your favorite movie with her after filling up a glass of water, and suddenly the phone rings. You are hopeful, maybe it’s about the baby, it’s got to be something good. All of a sudden the atmosphere changes and you realize it’s bad, really bad. All you can do is sit, make phone calls, hug, hold hands, pray to God, and wrap your arms around two people as tightly as you can possibly muster without wanting to lose it on your own after just six days.
Life is an odd assortment of moments and no one can quite figure out why or how something like a filled life ends, whether that ending is gradual or very sudden. I was never the kind of person who could understand death in family because it had never happened to me before. But here we are a week after I’ve found out that my grandma died and there are still no good words, just silence and prayer.
Things in life never seem to happen at a convenient time, especially like the tragedy of losing someone in your family, whether you are close to them or not. There are moments I will be hiding behind a tree shearing it and the thought that she is gone will cripple me and cause a few tears to fall. It’s difficult to think about someone who was once living just being gone from this weird thing we call life, and it’s hard for anyone’s mind to wrap around that kind of thing at all, really.
it’s hard for me to pinpoint where I am in that process right now, but I’m beginning to realize how short life really is. It’s way too short to keep grudges and annoyances against people because you don’t know when they’ll be gone. Because it’s not like death is always gradual, it can be shocking and sudden, too.
The thing I’ve reflected on (probably most) since knowing about my grandmother’s passing last week is how I want to live the rest of my life from here on out. I want to live a full life that was joyfully done, full of adventure, giving back, and pouring into others with all that I have. Doing so is painful and it hurts when you lose people you get to know well. But half of life, after all, is getting to know the people you’re around and completely being with them without distraction. It helps you to live fully and completely alive, for the Creator and close to Him, too, which is also important.
It happens in an instant. in the blink of an eye. In one moment. But it’s through the culmination of instances, blinks, and moments that we learn to live, become stronger, and push through the pain, grief, and sorrow; but definitely not fast and all at once. It’s slow and everyone deals with it differently. For me, I just kind of took it to God and wanted people to pray. The reach out from Squad Mates and others surprised me and it helped to know I was being prayed for and that there were people there if I needed to talk or vent. However, sometimes there are no words, just actions and silence, the simple knowing of a being beside you as you cry and begin again.
All my Love,
Ashley
X
