There are so many things about grief we don’t talk about. So many tiny elements in our minutes in the after that go under the radar unless you’re also living them. 

There is a connection felt with those who carry loss with them. Our atoms feel each other. 

The stages of grief are bullshit. You’ll feel every one of them on and off from day to day, month to month, year to year. Monday I might accept you’re gone, Tuesday’s denial and Wednesday too, Thursday I’ll be angry at you and Friday I’m back in shock. 

Other people live in a timeline where there are limits for your emotions around your loved one. Fuck that. You feel whatever you need to feel when you need to feel it. You’re not wrong for laughing two days after you lose someone and you’re not wrong for being a blubbering mess years after. 

You’re never the same after you lose someone. Death changes you. Your life becomes a time before/time after split. It sucks. 

Memories you make after get this really fun new layer of guilt with them because inevitably you think at some point ‘man, I wish X was here/could have seen this/done this/existed in this moment’.

There will be an insane amount of pressure from outside forces to move on. You may tell a therapist to fuck off for suggesting that you accept and release a loved one from your daily thoughts. 

You will hurt. Mentally, physically, emotionally. You’re going to feel some shit. You’re going to learn to carry it with you, you’ll earn the strength to do it, but it’s a bitch of a journey. 

Closure is complete bullshit. 

You’re going to find comfort in very unexpected places. Embrace the comfort no matter where it comes from as long as it’s not hurting you or someone else. 

Your last moments with them alive will replay in your mind. A lot.

Life events and milestones will be bittersweet. Places you go will have a tick mark of before and after.

Woot offs are never as fun.

You will find an exorbitant amount of things in day to day life that will remind you of the person you lost. This may lead people to question why the sight of BAWLS suddenly turned you from a smile to looking like someone kicked your puppy. 

Slurpees will never taste as good. Giant pickles and pickled sausages will have more emotional weight than such objects probably should. 

People will play grief Olympics a bit. Let them, you know how you feel, love is not a show you have to prove to anyone. 

You’re going to feel numb sometimes and raw others. 

Meeting new people who have never/will never know your person is weird as hell. You’ll never feel like you describe them effectively or give their personality justice. 

You may buy movies and never watch them purely because they remind you of them. 

Explaining your person died doesn’t get easier. If anything it gets harder to hear ‘I’m sorry’ or worse yet no reaction at all to this information.

Sometimes, you’re just going to need to throw up. 

Anyone that judges your grief process deserves swift removal from your existence. 

What you lose with that person will sting. You will learn things and be pissed you cannot share them. You will hear songs and be pissed they will never hear them. 

You will wish you had taken every ounce of knowledge from them you had and saved it to a million hard drives for safe keeping. You’ll wonder when humans will get cloud backups. You’ll laugh because you know they’d see the security flaws in that and hate that you even suggested it.

Loss is loss. There is not a scale for worth that differs between friends and blood. 

You will blame yourself. You will reply conversations wondering where you went wrong. You will blame others. You will blame yourself for not noticing the mistakes of others. You will blame science, religion, existence itself.

Nothing you do or that you learn about them after will really change the love you hold for the person that died. They earned it. They get to keep it.

Everything really is pretty fucking awful. 

Music will run the gamut between healing and breaking you all over again.

The dead never really leave us completely. The indents in our hearts they built carry on in every tiny thing that reminds us of them.

Traditions will continue or be built from the ashes. You’re so special you get two holidays in my life now. 

You really don’t get over it, you don’t even get used to it. You just learn to survive it. 

You will cherish every hug you ever shared. Especially when it took years before you had them in the first place.

Still waiting on my email from the afterlife. If anyone would figure that out, it’d be you.

You will miss sharing a sink with the year of vanity. 

Concerts will never be the same. 

Cliche bullshit will become amusing.

If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.

I miss you, Aaron. Always.