Delayed Grief

I know I have been missing in action, but my heart needed a place to offload so I wrote this piece.

I am trying so hard to keep it together but I can’t seem to get that right in this very moment, so let’s talk about delayed grief because your girl is not dealing 😅
Ps. I know I talk about my mother alot on here, but oh well, it is what it is.

Tuesday morning my grandmother’s sister (the last one standing) passed on, and because I don’t have a relationship with that side of the family I honestly felt nothing, not until I realised that my older sister was hurting because that changed a few things for me. I started feeling for the first time in a long while, but my feelings came in waves:

1st Wave – Guilt
Guilt for feeling this loss as my own, or rather claiming it as my own. I kept asking myself “Why are you not feeling anything Avehe your grandmother just died, it should hurt, why are you unbothered?”

2nd Wave – Anger
Anger towards this side of the family for not being present in my life after Mummy’s funeral, they acted like their only relative was Mummy and not us, so why should I today have to claim their loss as mine when they were not there for me, for us?

3rd Wave – Empathy
This was not really an emotion but I empathized with my sister, she truly was in pain and because I love her, her loss became mine, I could finally hear her hurt and understand why this hurts so much for her. It was at this point that I decided to accompany her to the funeral.

The moment we got into the car to head to the funeral, I felt this deep longing for my mother, nothing made sense, here i am sitting in a car heading to my grandmother from my mother’s side of the family for the 1st time in my life at the age of 25. It felt fitting that my first ever trip to this side of the family should be with her right? But she isn’t here, she didn’t live long enough to take me.

Seeing Mummy’s siblings opened wounds I thought had long healed from, seeing them made me ask the question that I have dreaded asking for so long “why are you not here?” And this made my heart break. I tend to say that my heart has never really been broken, but I realised that I might not have had my heart broken by boys yes, but my biggest heart break was losing Mummy.

It still doesn’t make sense 12 years later that she isn’t here, so naturally seeing her siblings broke my heart completely as I was reminded of what could have been and in my eyes what should have been.

I am sitting on my couch, eyes red and puffed up from crying due to old wounds that refuse to heal, a broken heart that although mended somehow tends to fall apart and I am left to pick up the pieces yet again. I know I have tried explaining what it feels like losing a mom, but I don’t believe I will ever truly be able to explain it, because somehow even I have not fully grasped it yet.

So this is me in 2020, Raw and Bare dealing with delayed grief, I am not okay today as I write this, but I’m reminded that this too shall pass and even when I’m m weak He is strong.

Signed
Embracing my vulnerability