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I’m in the third year of grieving the death of my mother. Of course, my life is now divided into the customary and proverbial Before and After. It’s a stark divide, and I can pinpoint the exact moment where I knew my life would be forever changed — the After. And I can recall the exact moment to which I will forever long to go back — the Before. I thought that was how it would always be. The Before and The After. Then, the first anniversary of her death passed. Then, the second. And I found myself splitting my life even further into a third category, a surprising bracket that I would never imagine I would want to revisit. A time that isn’t as talked about as much in everyday life, like the Before and After trope. An unspoken universe where time seems to stop. However, my algorithm understood my feelings. In the grief space, mourners, young and old, talked about this time and place. It’s the first wave of grief and, surprisingly, I find that sometimes I want to go back to it… Grievers can distinctly pinpoint two waves of grief after the death of a loved one. There’s the first wave. For me, this occurred the entire first year after my mom’s death. It’s sharp and intense. It’s waking up and re-remembering that she is gone multiple times a day, and then feeling like a knife has been plunged into my chest. Sounds terrible, right? Not necessarily. There are the glimmers. There’s comfort in the fact that my life could revolve around my mom’s death. It was acceptable to begin every conversation about her. It was admissible to immerse myself in the grief world: the grief groups, the books about Heaven and mourning, the phone calls from concerned and caring friends and family members, the stories I would write, the journal I would pen to her every day, the signs that seemed to frequently arise when I needed them the most, the stories we would tell and the toasts we proclaimed in my mom’s honor. Time crawls at a maddeningly slow pace. Then, it ended around the one-year mark, and suddenly, my world of grief had to shrink. Life had to move on. It was taboo to still be talking, writing, and posting about my mom constantly. It had to end. I understood I couldn’t stay in the first wave of grief forever. Gradually, life started to change. My dad started dating again. She moved in with him, and my mom’s possessions and decorations were slowly replaced. I could no longer tell my new group of students that my mom “just” died last year. The toasts faded. The phone calls dwindled. I could no longer watch a video of my mom without breaking down. While my mom and my grief were very much alive in my heart, showing my pain to the outside world was something I had to hide. And that’s when the second wave of grief started. The second wave of grief occurs in the years following a loved one’s death. It can disappear for a while but then come back. It’s less intense, but it is deeper as it has wedged itself into the crevices of your soul. The reality and enormity of the death settle in, and the shock of it wears off when you realize that this thing is permanent, and you’ve been forever changed. It’s worse because life moves on when you are wondering how it could move on for you when someone who was at the core of your life is gone. The death of my mom is starting to feel normal in the day-to-day. I know that I can’t call her. I know she isn’t coming back. It’s hard to accept that with each milestone, she will miss out. Time moves maddeningly fast. In a way, I want to go back to the first wave of grief. I miss how we were all connected by mom’s death. Yet, I know that life has to move on, and I have learned to appreciate the beauty in life more. My mom will always be by my side and in any wave of grief, I will just hold on and hang in there until we meet again…
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