A Day In The Life

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” – Vicky Harrison

Grief. An emotion that catches us unaware at times, creeping up and rearing its head when unexpected. A song comes on the radio, a woman walks buy wearing the same perfume a loved one wore. Maybe it is just a perfect day with the sun shining that makes you ache they are not here to witness it.

A childhood friend I grew up with died last month. We had known each other since the first grade, and as teenagers were close. We kept in touch after high school, I went to visit her at college her first year, but we began to lose touch as the years wore on. I ran into her mother in 2009 who told me my friend had undergone a heart transplant. She was 50 at the time. I reached out to her through Facebook and we reconnected. Her life up to this point had been a good one, she became a lawyer, lived in a beautiful suburb of New York, married a wonderful man who adored her, and had three children. She and her husband traveled a great deal. We would see each other every few years, sometimes with a group of friends, sometimes we would meet for lunch alone. We kept up on what was happening in one anothers lives through Facebook.

She did not have it easy living as a transplant patient. The constant fear of rejection, the medications that made her ill, the biopsies of her new heart, the only word I can think to use is stoic. I remember talking to her about how challenging it was living with the ups and downs, and her response was simply, “there is no choice.”

In 2019 she underwent another heart transplant. We texted daily, and she was finally able to come home after months in the hospital. More milestones were celebrated, her son got married, her daughter got engaged. Then I didn’t hear from her for a few months, unlike her not to respond to my texts. Word came that she had passed away. She was 63.

I was unprepared for the news of her death. It shook me. How could this be? How could she no longer be here? There were still so many events left, her children were young, her husband had just retired. Her husband told me she had suffered so the last months of her life. Ever stoic, but so unwell. My mind kept flashing back to childhood, to the endless weekends we spent together hanging out with “our group”, to our lunch dates and conversations. I found myself deeply saddened, thinking of her throughout my days.

There is grief when we lose someone who leaves a space in our daily lives, and then there is grief that may not disrupt our daily routine, but leaves us feeling the loss knowing that person is not here to continue in their life as they were. I think of the disrupted lives she left, her family members, her own mother. I think of how we grew up side by side, not knowing our fate when we were eight years old, and now here hers is played out in front of me. Grief. It sweeps over me when I am reminded of her. When I think of her no longer being here.

Grief