Celebrating Life & Grieving Its End - April 2023

On March 30th I turned 24. I spent the last hour being 23 and the first half hour being 24 sobbing. And i couldn't quite figure out why exactly. Maybe it was all catching up on me. Maybe I felt some kind of relief, like "okay, i made it another round". Maybe I was frustrated that I wasn't as happy as I wanted to be - celebrating 24 years on this planet. Maybe I was frustrated because I was not even close to being where 17 year old me imagined. But I think 15 year old me would have been proud knowing I made it to 24 at all.

Maybe it was because grief lingered around the corner. 

On Monday I had asked for poetry prompts on this app called "Sincerely" - and I got a response with the request to "turn her pain into something as beautiful as poetry" and write something about her fiance who had recently passed away. I started crying reading her message and starting writing. The next day, Tuesday evening, my sister and I were about to watch a movie when our phones lit up and we saw our Dads message saying that our Grandma might not have long.
So we drove to her place as a family and spent some time together and said goodbye. Which felt just very weird and surreal (she was asleep the whole time).

On my birthday two days later my sister woke me up and we had half an hour of joy and morning giggles, making plans for the day, until our Dad wrote that our Grandma just passed away.
I spent half my 24th birthday with family at my Grandmas bedside. 
And after that we ate cake for breakfast.

The next two weeks I tried to keep going. I tried to let life move on but didn't know how to move along with it. After my other Grandma passed away last year I promised myself that I would take time to process and feel anything I needed to feel when grief would come knocking again.
I guess I still don't know how to.
The day of her funeral came and I couldnt cry. I had distanced myself from everything that was happening and from what I was feeling that there were no tears, nothing. 
After the funeral, back home, it creeped in. Grief came out of hiding and I was overwhelmed with emotions. So the next week I called in sick for two days. And I took time to breathe. Spent time outside and offline. Writing, reflecting, feeling. Breathing. 

And it was the best thing I could have done. 

April was such a weird month. Thinking about it almost every month feels a bit weird looking back. But I guess with big life events happening it just feels a little weirder. 

For the past 2-3 weeks I have been going on walks. Alone and with my siblings. I wrote and recorded poetry. I took some time to breathe. And especially those walks were super helpful. Seeing the world blossom and spring fully arriving felt good. I hope I'll keep going on walks. Those were moments my heart smiled. Just like when we visited a beautiful city with a magical castle Easter monday. Or when I got to witness sunsets. Or eat the first ice cream of the year. Or seeing the rainbow-beams dancing through my room as time passes and the sun shines through the window. Or dicovering new music. Or witnessing the flowers opening up on my way to school. Connecting with creative people, having deep conversations with my siblings. Figuring out Procreate and drawing the first real pictures (still on that). 

Someone said during on of our walks (roughly translated): "what is the meaning of life but to be witnesses of beauty". And I cant stop thinking about that. Its basically the essence of There Is Beauty Even Here. Its been helping me so much to be on the look out for beauty. And to see it as a privilege. Like, I get to see this awesome sunset right now or these beautiful flowers bloom,... how weirdly wonderful is that?

~ 7.5.23