I remember my SPU tour guide introduced the counseling center to my mom and me by saying, “This is where you go when college gets hard, when your dog dies, or when your grandparents start passing away.” I remember feeling an abrupt disruption in my rose-colored imaginings of my soon-to-be college experience. Obviously, time continues to race forward even when you’re in college, but a college campus has a way of tricking you into thinking everything else beyond its boundaries is frozen, just waiting for you to get that degree and come back to the ‘real world.’ I wasn’t prepared to start thinking about my loved ones passing, especially as an out-of-state student. His comment made me uncomfortable, but we kept on with the tour and soon I was distracted by the tulips blossoming and the gorgeous blue sky.
I’m sure we’re all aware by now that life has a funny way of making us experience extreme highs and lows simultaneously. This is my reminder to the reader to make sure you’re taking time, a resource you feel you have less and less of with every quarter that passes, for yourself.
Three years later, I am unfortunately living out the experience foreshadowed by my tour guide. My grandfather passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago. I dropped everything and flew home painfully aware of the fact that I was the only out-of-state family member. I love Seattle but in that moment, I’ve never wished more to have chosen to stay in-state. It came as a shock, one I am still processing.
But of course, life continues. The business plan competition I had been preparing for since the fall, happened to be scheduled three days after my grandfather’s passing. So, I practiced my pitch and continued to meet with my team, knowing deep down that if my adrenaline ran out, I would simply shut down. Rushing from interviews to meetings, I would find myself alone in my car for a few spare moments listening to a playlist my family had made with songs that my grandfather loved.
My team’s hard work and determination paid off and we won. It was a surreal moment; one that I’ll never forget and definitely counts as the highlight of my academic career. All while I was grieving. I was left questioning. How do I do this? How do I celebrate and mourn at the same time, all while midterms are approaching?
So here’s what I’ve learned for anyone who can relate to the paralyzing state of having good and bad things happening in your life concurrently:
- You’re human-sized
We really can only process one emotion at a time. So, you have to take what you’re feeling and ride it out. Enjoy the highs because they are so special. Never feel guilty for them. Take the lows knowing there’s grace. You can only do one thing at a time, and sometimes that one thing is grieving. I absolutely hate falling behind on classwork, but I let myself turn in assignments late because I knew I couldn’t do both. You can’t grieve the loss of a loved one while doing stats homework. I don’t make the rules.
- “I’m so sorry for your loss…”
I love people and I love talking to them, but I found myself at a loss of words when people said this to me. I wasn’t offended; I just simply didn’t know what to say beyond thank you. Thank you feels like the wrong response, but it’s the only thing that I can think of. This point isn’t a suggestion for a new response that magically handles this conversation with new-found grace, but rather it’s just me letting you know you’re not alone in hating this conversation.
- Don’t be scared to remember
Listening to my grandfather’s honorary playlist, while a guaranteed tear-inducing experience, was also extremely cathartic for me. Let yourself remember. A fresh loss allows you to remember lots of forgotten details about your loved ones. If you feel up for it, take the opportunity to document them in a way that doesn’t feel too overwhelming to you. The last thing you want to do is give yourself grieving homework, so make sure the documentation process is organic. It’s extremely painful to face the permanent reality of death. To realize you won’t be able to have that grandparent at graduation, your wedding, or next year’s Christmas dinner, is crushing. But what’s even more debilitating is running away from those thoughts. While time does nothing to minimize the loss, you become more comfortable with the reality. Denial is a fool’s errand and self-sabotage.
- Grace
Never be so grief-oriented, that you shame yourself for any happiness you feel.
Never be so present-minded, that you feel embarrassed by delayed grief.
Practice grace, practice patience.
Perhaps, if you’re feeling up for it, practice the rare kind of gratitude that rises out of the perspective we gain from sudden loss. What really matters in life? I’ve found my anxiety about grades and internships has been totally knocked off its pedestal in the wake of my reflections and experiences of family and community.
I hope you can walk away laughing at how insane life is. Because if we don’t laugh then it’s just ugly and if we don’t cry we’re not seeing it fully. Maybe it’s really a gift that good and bad can simultaneously exist. Some days it feels like a sick joke, but on others, it’s the only thing pushing you onward when you otherwise would stop.