Inexplicable Feelings

Humbly, I would say I’m usually pretty good at putting words to some of the world’s most mysterious and inexplicable feelings. Not emotions, like sadness, joy, or anger, but rather feelings. Whether it’s love, passion, or faith, I’m typically able to put into words what those feel like, even if they seem impossible to explain. Grief, though, is one that I’m not sure I’m quite able to yet.

Before this month, I had never experienced loss in super heavy ways. Sure, I had a few distant relatives pass away in my younger years, but I wasn’t old enough to quite grasp the velocity of the situation; and I wasn’t necessarily the closest with anyone that I’d lost.

This month, I lost someone very close to me, and the emotions that came with it were certainly very heavy as is, but my distance from the situation added different layers to the situation. Living in Austin, Texas, many states away from my family’s home in Illinois, I was sort of detached from the situation, and wasn’t around to help much. The only thing I could do to help was send phone calls and text messages to him to try and lift his mood when he was struggling, but I still wasn’t there.

The last time I ever spoke to him was over FaceTime, and I was almost certain that it would be my last time talking to him, yet I held onto hope that maybe it wasn’t. The last time I saw him was almost two months ago, and I wasn’t there to say goodbye when he was passing.

There was a level of guilt that came with that. Not in the sense that I caused his passing, but more so in the idea that I could’ve been there some more. Guilt was one of the first emotions that arose from the grief that I’m processing, and it was one of the weirdest to navigate.

Even now, a week after his funeral, the feeling of grief that I’ve been experiencing still is incredibly difficult to put into words. In fact, I won’t even try to describe it. Instead, I will touch on one thing I’ve noticed about grief in my time when I went home for the wake and the funeral:

Yes, grief is an inherently sad feeling. It’s the somberness of not being able to see someone again; it can be a relative passing, your girlfriend breaking up with you, or a close friend drifting apart from you. But, to me, grief is just an extension of love. We only experience such a gigantic feeling of sadness when losing somebody close to us because we loved them with so much of our hearts. And to love is one of the strongest things that somebody can do, one of the most vulnerable things to do. Isn’t that something to be proud of?

I was sitting at the dinner table with my entire extended family of parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, and my grandmother, following my grandfather’s funeral, and through all of the sadness that I was enduring, I was feeling so much gratitude. I was so grateful to love my grandfather beyond belief, and I was so grateful that he loved me too, and that I knew he did. I was so grateful that he gave me my mother, and I was so grateful that my mother found my father, and I was so grateful that they gave me my brother. I was so grateful that my grandfather gave me my uncles, who found and loved my aunts, who gave me all of my wonderful cousins.

I was sitting there, embracing the sadness of him not being there, but still smiling, feeling so much joy in embracing the love I had for him and everyone that he was able to bring to me. I was so grateful that we were all together, going through the struggle together, and showcasing how much love we all had in our hearts, thanks to my Nonno.