Grief

    Grief is a funny thing. On any particular day it is hovering in the background, your constant friend. Other days it hits you in the chest and brings you to your kneed gasping for breath. The oddest thing will set your eyes to watering and the people around you question your sanity as you randomly flee a room to calm your mind.
    I can tell you with certainty the day I realized late night calls almost always bring bad news. I was 16. Next month that will have been 15 years ago. September 17, 1999. The day Emily Grace Sullivan died.
    To say Emily was my friend would be a truth. To say she was my good friend would depend on the day. We had known each other since 2nd grade. By third grade she had moved on to a new school but we still saw each other once a year at the annual fire department picnic where my dad was a Battalion Chief and her Grandmother was a "Friend of the Fire Department". Since there were no other girls, our age or otherwise, we ran around together for the day and usually forgot about each other until the next year.
    When it came time to go to high school I was terrified. You see I lived in a tiny town where our kindergarten through 8th grade school had roughly 200 kids. While my friends were going to the small country high school fifteen minutes away, my parents were having me transferred to 40 minutes away to a bigger town where the freshman class had 400 students. Just in one class! In eighth grade I still had one teacher all day long and three recesses. Times were a-changing. And I knew no one!
   I went to volleyball tryouts three weeks before my freshman year and in the sea of faces I saw one I knew. Emily. She was surrounded by friends. I smiled and gave a quick wave before ducking my head and moving to the corner alone. I was never one to seek out people. Try outs started and the grind of volleyball only pushed away for a little bit my overwhelming loneliness I felt. At my old school I had been voted Most Athletic. I led the volleyball and basketball teams with flair. Here, I was worried I would not even make the team. And everyone knew everyone!
  Lunch came and I sat alone with my sandwich and water, trying to figure out how to make friends. Plop! Emily sat down in front of me. "Natalie, right?" I smiled and nodded. "I remember you from Applegate. You and Story. How is Story doing?" And like that the weight was lifted. I had a friend.

  By my junior year Emily and I were on the JV team together. During daily doubles, our teammates would venture home for our three hour break while Emily and I would cruise to the mall and hang out. We both lived about 40 minutes from the school so it did no good to drive back and forth. I am so glad we had that week together. Though she still had her other friends and I had mine, we forged a bond that week of being the two juniors still on JV. We had our spats. For instance, we both were up to play Right side hitter and she won the spot. I was the back up. And every time she messed up I thought I should be there instead. In fact, we got in such a bad fight once, I went home and told my parents I was quitting. And though they didn't let me, it was with that venom in my heart that I worked myself up into a tizzy when she did not show up for practice one Friday afternoon. We had a tournament the next day and she was unable to attend, but she still needed to come to practice. Everyone else was headed to a football game after practice but I was tired so I drove home, ate dinner with my family and went to bed. Then the phone rang.

  "Natalie," my mom's voice on the other side of the door beckoned. "It's for you. It's coach Lorenz." I got to the phone and said "Hi coach. Is the tournament canceled?"
"Well, yes. It is," he said. "You see Natalie, Emily was in a car crash this afternoon. She died." I didn't say a word, just handed my phone to one of my parents and started crying. The other parent got on the phone asking what was going on. My happy teenage world had shattered.

 To this day I cannot talk about the emotions I dealt with in that time. I know some thought it weird I felt so strongly because I was not her Best Friend or even one of her group of bests. But as an insecure teenager with few friends, I had counted her as one. And her parting on a bad note was hard to digest.

In the years since grief has hit time and again and we lose relatives and friends that are so dear to us. It never hits the same way and the healing process is different each time as well. When I lost my Grandma I took comfort in the fact I had made it to her bedside before she died and got to see a smile when she realized I was there. When my grandfather died I was confined to bed and unable to see him in his last days or go to his funeral to mourn. The two deaths, while equally sad, hit me in different ways.

Then there are the gone too soons. Emily had been joined by many others on that list and the unfairness of it hits me every single time. How can these horrible people on earth continue living while the sweet, innocent and kind die early? Or those that never had the chance, like miscarriages and children? I get so consumed with these thoughts that at times it is hard to function. I have to physically remove the thoughts from my head to continue with normal life.

I will not get philosophical with the why are we here questions and all that. My main topic is grief and to that I will return despite my long winded tangent I needed to express. The fact is, grief never heals. A child loses a beloved pet and as an adult the pain of that separation can still haunt them. Whatever person said "time heals all wounds" was an idiot. Wounds scab over, become less painful until you poke at them and eventually fade. But what is left is a scar. Some are visible to everyone and some are hidden inside. But the scars never leave us.
  In the 15 years since Emily left, the 2 years since Tyler left and the 4 months since Grandpa left, I have found that even on the best day it just takes one little innocent thing to remind me of my pain. One barking seal to remind me I will never hear Emily's hideous, albeit hilarious, laugh again. One babyfaced 25 year old trying to convince a store clerk he is old enough to buy a lottery ticket to remind me of Tyler's innocent facade and old man at the cafe telling stories of days gone by to remind me I will never hear Grandpa tell me of how he used to torment his sisters again.

Everyone handles grief differently and under no circumstances should they be told how to do it. Be kind to everyone, for everyone is battling something.