Give Them Their Flowers

The thing about the human experience is that we are always evolving and upgrading. From cavemen, to civilization. From one revolution to the next revolution and so on. I've begun to learn that life itself will always move on. It's a constant continuum that never ends even when it ends. The fascination I’ve always had with history is simply the fact that everything we can read and watch has actually happened on this planet. Like anything that you can think of, any era of time has occurred on earth. The crazy part to me is that it comes and goes carrying with it all the wonderful and dreadful events that happen, yet we can relive those moments through books and movies. Another thing that fascinates me is the ability of humans to move on and adapt with the world. We can leave behind the ways of one space in time to accommodate and conform to the upcoming era. Meaning we left the shag carpets in the 70s and moved on to hardwood flooring(nothing wrong with shag if that's your thing, do you). Although we all have this ability to look and move forward, for some of us it's extremely hard to actually live out.

Timing

Time heals all. This saying conjures up so many complexities because it definitely doesn’t feel that way every time. When you fall and scrape your knee, yeah that can only heal with a few days of letting the skin and blood do its thing. What about healing your mind or your heart? How long does that take? The things we go through everyday can begin to weigh heavy on us in unimaginable ways. As we grow up and move on our own accord, it only gets harder and emotions get heavier. This was a great surprise to me as you can imagine. All my life I dreamed of being on my own and the great things I could do when I was “free”. The freedom I have is amazing, but I feel it all comes with a cost. To gain the things we want in life, other things have to fall to the waste side. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, you must change and leave the past in the past. Of course this is easier said than done for any of us. Once we begin to put time and effort into someone or something, the thought of letting it go seems atrocious… heart-wrenching… blood-curdling. And we wish we could hold on forever.

Heartbreak

I know everyone hasn’t experienced the death of a loved one. But the loss of friends or significant others who haven't died can still weigh on us. Death isn't the only loss we can endure in this life. Going through a break-up can be disastrous to your mental and emotional health. I think I might be a hopeless romantic or something because I think I had too many heartbreaks. I will never forget the first time this girl I liked told me she didn’t want to be with me anymore in a note! I cried like a baby when I got in my mom’s car. This was fifth grade mind you. Guess I really liked her. But I remember my last heart break and that... that was something serious. Crying for days, eating too much or too little, hoping I would see her around anywhere I walked just to get a glimpse of her. You really feel it in your heart and your stomach. It's this actual, physical pain. I know it's crazy to think about if you've never felt it. You used to talk to this person all day everyday, then wake up one day to never talk to them again. But somehow you're always hoping to see them in any way you can. This is when you find yourself putting their name in every social media search bar just to look at their pictures and see what they have been up to. This sucks I know and anyone who has been through it will know what I’m saying.

Ride or Dies

Losing friends I’d say is just as bad. You have been friends with someone since the sandbox. Y'all grew up doing everything together, attending the same schools and playing every sport on the same team. You confide in each other, revealing all your secrets knowing they would go to the grave before telling a soul. It gets to the point where this person's family is like your family and vice versa. You pull up to their house and plop on the couch as if you walked into your own home. You can have in-depth conversations with their parents and other household members, and ten minutes can go by before you actually see your friend’s face because they were doing chores in another room. This type of closeness is built over years of time. You and this person have gone through war together, and come out to heal each other's wounds. To lose this type of friend is like losing a limb. Your right hand man has been severed from you at the wrist, and you have no one else to attend to this wound, so you are stuck bandaging yourself up one handed.

Hasta Muerte

Now I have personally had deaths in my family and most recently had someone die who I had a connection with and who my family loved to visit when we went back home. It's hard to understand the initial thought that this person has left the earth. Only leaving behind memories, past conversations, and only a few photos to look back on. This is certainly an indescribable feeling. No longer can we talk on the phone. I can’t visit her nor taste her amazing food made from scratch. I remember once, as my family was leaving her house, my grandma hugged me, then slid me some money on the low like it was a drug deal or something, then proceed to tell me not to spend it on drugs. It’s the memories like these that we have to hold on to, and it's also up to us to share these memories so that our loved ones live as long as they can through us. My grandma has probably said enough prayers to last my whole lifetime and then some, I know she's ecstatic to be home.

Acceptance

We know the saying that everything happens for a reason. We may never know what that reason is but on a higher level there is one. I also believe in the butterfly effect, in that one happening can lead to a ripple effect of other happenings. This too has bleak reasoning because we may never know the catalyst for something going on in our lives, but we essentially have to live with it. Moving on in life is a hard thing to do because oddly enough it's much more comforting to sit and grieve than to put our past behind us. As hard things occur in our life, we have to learn to allow ourselves to feel the emotions running through us, then allow them to go away as they always do. To accept the losses in our lives will never be easy. If it were, their significance would be minute, therefore we wouldn't take it as seriously as we do. Of course there’s the option to push it out of your mind and be numb to the situation, but are you really numb? The times I chose to be numb to things and pretend I wasn’t hurt led to some of the worst days of my life, and NO ONE knew. I don’t think numbing our emotions is really what we say it is. To be numb is not to feel. When you go through a loss, all you do is feel; we force ourselves to deny the feelings, hide from them, and run so that they never catch up to us. This is no way to live your life. These feelings only seem to linger in your life. It's as if they don't disappear but they are just unseen by our conscious mind.

Flow

We have to learn to accept our situations and let our emotions flow through us as they are meant to. Even in times of grief we can find a moment of genuine laughter, this is what that flow looks like. I know it's hard to accept life for what it is when it isn't going our way. Truthfully the human experience wouldn't be worth anything if we only experienced the highs of life. Without the lows we would never appreciate the highs. Life would just be dull and mediocre because there would be no emotional down time. You wouldn’t cherish your tears of joy if you never shed tears of pain.

Stop to Smell the Roses

I can't give a timeline on when we may get over the losses we endure in this life. No one can tell you how long to grieve or if you should be grieving at all. Even with all the knowledge and science we have, every human is having their own experience every day. It is up to you to enjoy what you enjoy and feel every single emotion that runs through your body. Nobody said this shit would be easy, but everyday you wake up, it's worth it. Go give someone a long, tight hug. Call someone you care about and express how much they mean to you. We only get one life, so give people their flowers while they can smell them.

-J

In Loving Memory of

Loretta Carter

1942-2020