Grief.

"People come, people go." how many times have you heard that sentence and couldn't agree more? Now, let's just talk about how they go. It's just the suckiest feeling ever existed when people leave. Especially your loved ones.

I've lost people in my life, quite numerous in fact. And I would say that it's not just that feeling of loss you have but at the back of your head you know that one day, you're gonna see them again. No. Even your head is telling you that you will never going to see them, ever.

The thing about grief, at least for me, it comes in stages.

Stage one, is the stage where you realized that you were gonna lose this person soon. It's not even the feeling that tells you, you know that the end is near.

Stage two, is THE DAY. You're sad but the sadness is vague because you're kinda still trying to figure out what the hell is happening. Most likely, you're trying to figure out if this is REALLY happening. This is normally the moment where you asked yourself if it was just a dream, or, if you have a huge sense of humor, you would even still have the nerve to ask someone to pinch you.

Stage three. So this is what people might call it the moment of truth. Oh, it bites, it bites real hard and deep through your flesh, it hurts so much that you cry with no voice nor tears yet so hard that your veins are popping. Once you got to this stage, it would be hard to hold up the tears. The tears would just run by without you even realizing it. Which brings us to the next stage..

.. stage four. Memories and everything that you had with this person. That's the worst thing from what one of my favorite writers said. "The worst thing about it is knowing what you will be missing." He added also that it's not the things that haven't happened. It's the things that we took for granted when they were still there. Just petit example, now that my dad is not around anymore, you know what I miss the most about him? I miss him asking me to pass him something, I don't know, an ashtray or the rice when we're at the dining table. It was always me. We could have 10 people in the room, I could be meters away from him, but it was always me. And I didn't realize that until he's gone. I took it for granted.

Stage five, is how we manage to carry on, to move on with our life. I just finished reading Man and Boy by Tony Parson. In one of the dialogs, there is this line "... you don't get over it, of course. You can never get over it ... I miss him. I'm lonely. Sometimes I'm frightened. But you have to learn to let go. That's part of what it means to love someone. If you love someone you don't just see them as an extension of yourself. You don't just love them for what's in it for you. Love means knowing when to let go." So yes, this is where we try to let go..

And finally, the last stage, the stage that has no end. They may be gone for years now, you think that you have forgotten them, you would think. But to tell you the truth, what difference does a day make? 1 week, 8months, 5 years, 20 years, at the end, there will always be one specific moment where you miss them so much that you go back to stage 3. You realized that they're gone, you're sad, and you cry it out loud.

So yeah, grief. Suckiest feeling ever but with time, you'll learn to enjoy it. (Sort of.)

Besides, just keep in mind that the spirit lives, and it's the spirit that made them who they were when they were alive. Whatever religion there is, if we look closer, they all believe the same thing: the body may be gone, but the spirit stays in our hearts.

This writing is dedicated to the spirits of my late beloved ones. Thank you for being my guardian angels and keeping me warm in the winter.