Have you ever cried so hard your entire face hurts?
I did just that when I lost my cat, Kyle. She was beaten to death by our neighbor’s dog as she unknowingly wandered on their lawn probably at the break of dawn. When the morning came, my mother frantically called me from outside our house, saying my cat was dead. I rushed outside, still heady from sleep, and there she was, cold as the morning air. She was pregnant, so I didn’t just lose her but her unborn kittens as well. She marked every corner of our house with her soft-white-angel-like fur that it never felt the same after her death.
Losing a loved one is undoubtedly the most heartbreaking thing a person could ever experience. When one morning they’re okay, and the next, you wake up to the call of them dying. For a moment, you can’t process the truth, and the next, you can’t help but thrash and wail and call all the gods for an explanation as to why you have to lose them. You keep thinking that it’s not their time yet; that they still have eight lives to live out, that there’s still a lot of things to say– but not one of them is goodbye.
We can’t predict when life would end, but we can learn how to deal with our emotions when the inevitable comes for those we hold dear — and we are allowed to thrash and wail as loud as we can. It takes time for someone to learn how to live with their grief. The process shouldn’t and couldn’t be hastened. Grief is an emotion that needs to be dealt with thoroughly until the person can be okay with not being okay; and for them to know that it’s okay to not be okay.
The only way to do now is to allow the feeling to exist, to stand by and hope that the day will come when we can smile again despite this hollow feeling in our hearts. Grief is not a problem that needs to be fixed — people who are grieving can’t be rushed to deal with their loss. Some have it harder than others, that’s why it's so important to have it acknowledged and dealt with.
“Ikaw ning baki, love?”
Here’s a line that had people laughing on social media despite it being a part of a grieving context: a woman posted a photo of a frog near the grave of her deceased lover and asked the infamous question written above as its caption. Memes and anecdotes started sprouting left and right because this statement from the woman whose boyfriend was fatally shot by a pastor (who turns out she also had a relationship with), seemed to be some sort of mindless trolling. Regardless, you would think that the sentence prior to this would only occur in movies and telenovelas, but real life is not short of such surprises. Needless to say, humor has always been a relief for the angst and depression that grief puts us through; and given that we are Filipinos, our superstitions lie in the little things in life that make us want to believe that they are true and possible.
Since it is a belief that the spirit of our loved ones will come back to visit us or remind us to pray for their souls, they usually take the form of a butterfly (not a frog, unfortunately) when they pay a visit to assure us that they will live on, which sounds quite haunting if you think about it.
Now, I assume you know the context of that line and understand why it seems comical, considering the possibility that the frog being near the grave may be a mere coincidence and has nothing to do with the spirit taking the form of the frog– but haven’t we all been there?
Haven’t we all wished that certain signs, whether they seem nonsensical and absurd at most, maybe the ultimatum of our lasting memory of one’s passing? I know I have. I think of every white-furred cat that jumps by our window from time to time, as a reminder of Kyle. It's a particular wish to crave their presence even if it's totally uncalled for, even if it means having the world laugh at our sorrows, and I think that’s okay.
People have different ways of coping with grief. Some people prefer to isolate themselves from the world, some take comfort in signs they thought were given by those who have passed, some try to get on with their lives and hide their pain, and others turn to their families and friends. Sometimes we forget that despite the person looking and doing fine, there will always be a dark cloud in their life that could dampen their spirits anytime, and when that happens, it is not for us to offer advice when it is not needed, wanted, or asked. What we can do to be helpful is to stay out of their way and let them cope with their loss. Other people’s grief is not ours to take and process, and we shouldn’t take their ways for granted.
At the end of the day, there’s peace in knowing that the spirits of the departed will live on; that they are now in a different place where they can be at peace somewhere in the plane of existence. I still think about Kyle, and I doubt I’ll ever let go of her memory at any given point in time.
One cannot know when the mourning will finish, and there is always an unheard pain that will persist despite the comfort we offer to those who mourn for the departed, but we have to live with it; we have to take it and carry on for the promise of the life they missed out on – because that’s the beauty of grief.