18 Years Is A Long Time To Be Dead

When I started writing about grief and my losses, I didn’t foresee how often I would get asked the question, “how does this change your relationship to death?”.

In conversation, death was centered from the beginning. My mom’s death spoken of more than her life. The death of who I had been was seemingly pushed aside to make room for who the world needed me to be immediately after.

At the start of my time with grief, the question wasn’t explicit, instead at 10 years old, I was asked,

“How has your mom’s death impacted you this year?”

I’m a boat in the middle of waves that take me wherever they please. That’s what I wish I would have had the confidence to say, but I was 10 years old, so of course I didn’t.

Instead, “I don’t know.”

Instead, “I’m fine.”

Instead, silence because the only times I had been honest had traumatized me into not speaking truth again.

Like that time in the therapist’s office a handful of months after my mom died.

I had bravely walked towards the woman when she called my name from the door that separated the clinic’s offices from the waiting room. My pediatrician had recommended her to my uncle and I loved my pediatrician because she had always given me more than…