Initial Thoughts of Gratitude After You Died

People ask me/wonder how I survived. It was the hardest pain I've ever endured. Today, on the 4th anniversary of your death, I reminisce about the first moments of gratitude that I experienced not long after you died. I'm so proud of myself for keeping my heart and mind open, in order to receive these gifts as they revealed themselves to me. Out of all places, in the darkest catastrophic event my heart has ever experienced, there were lights all around me.

You didn’t suffer.

Nobody hurt you.

Nobody witnessed the trauma of you crossing over.

I got to see you for a month before your last days.

You got to see everyone you loved before you left.

I received copious amounts of emotional support from family and friends.

You left when the weather was warm, and made it possible for me to sit outside for full days and evenings, watching the leaves on the trees dancing in the wind.

I got to have you in my life until you left the nest, and watch you create your own amazing memories in your first 2 years of undergrad.

I had 2 years of getting used to not having you around because you lived in Kingston.

You told Jacqui hours before you died that you had never felt happier. That it felt like everything had come together in your life. You happened to mention minutes before you died, that you couldn't believe how lucky you were to have such loving friends and family all around you.

There are paradoxes within every layer of my grief for you. I embrace them, because they have brought light to the darkest of places in my soul. I have found laughter in debilitating sadness, overwhelming beauty in crushing pain, and boundless love in the most profound of losses.