Aine Geraghty
January 5, 2015
When my grandfather
passed away this past November, a friend took me in their arms and said “Life
is a gift.” I thought about
that for a while. It didn’t make seeing my
grandfather lying in his casket, much like a wax figure, any easier. Nor did it
make my breathing less shaky when I couldn't stop sobbing as one of
pallbearers. But I did think about it a lot. Then, we were all sat at the
awkward lunch that comes after burying a family member, which I guess is for
people to come over and say “Boy, you did a
beautiful job of bringing your grandfather to his grave. Now I’m
going to touch you and talk your ear off, even though that’s the last thing
you want right now and you probably don't know me.”
I
sat with my second cousins, who are more like extended siblings, and I just
understood what really loving someone meant. They embodied it in how they lived
and how they treated each other and me. And for the first time, in a long
running period of days where everything was horrible, I laughed. I smiled and
enjoyed living with them in that moment. I had fully grasped what my friend had
said to me.
Then came the New
Year. Everyone uses it as an excuse to pretend like they are going to be a
better person starting January 1st, but instead they just wake up and spend the
day tweeting about how drunk they were the night before. I was woken up and
told my rabbit was dead. Happy New Year to me. This rabbit had been like a pet
dog, like a best friend, like a child to me. And on the first day of 2015, we
had dig a hole in the backyard to put her body in. So much for a brighter year
than 2014. Everything was gray again. The sky suddenly seemed plastic and I
began to wonder if parts of my life had simply been mistaken with dreams. I
felt alone, because who would really understand how hard losing my rabbit was?
To most people, it’s just a rabbit. It’s
not that big of a deal. I decided I would stay in bed for most of the night and
the next morning until I had to get dressed for work.
It’s
January 2nd, 2015. Noon. I’m
throwing off the covers and my mother is yelling through sobs on the telephone.
Someone is dead. I just know it. My stomach can sense it and my hands won't
work right to open my bedroom door. She slams down the phone and I stand at the
top of the stairs, afraid to take that Band-Aid of hope that I could be wrong,
and rip it off. But I do it anyway. My cousin, my “extended brother” who was only
twenty, had been killed in a tragic accident. Happy New Year to everyone. “Why
won’t
you stop”
is
all I could say, and to no one in particular. I thought: how am I supposed to
go to work anymore? How am I supposed to go to school ever again? How am I
supposed to wake up at all in the morning?
Because I’m
alive. I don’t know who or what decides who lives
and dies, and I’m not really sure I’m
in a place to understand that. But when I wake up every morning, I will get to
see things those I have lost cannot. Is it fair? I don’t
believe so. But strangely, life is fair because it is unfair to everyone. I don’t
mean in every aspect of living, just in the areas we have no control over. It
is so very important to realize that life is a gift. I don’t
know who the secret Santa was that went over the $10 limit and gave everyone
this gift, but I’m thankful anyway.
Without appreciation for this gift, there can be no love or happiness in the
world. And frankly, that’s
the only reason to stay alive. We all live in a strange circle that can’t
be understood, but can only be appreciated while we’re
still in it. I may be sad for a long time, perhaps even the rest of the year. But
that’s okay. It’s perfectly fine to
grieve for as long and in any way you’d like, and you should never feel that
you have to apologize for that. You can be mad, you can scream and cry, you can
even live in a happy denial. The only thing that you can’t do is give up. It
sounds so corny, and I’m
sure in these times of sorrow no one is looking for a Brady Bunch moment, but
you can see the truth in that statement all around you. When you stand on a
mountain top and realize how endless existence is, when you hear a baby’s laughter and
understand that is where you started, and when you see the sunrise over the
tops of you neighbors roofs and silently register the start to a new day. It’s all there. In
every moment of living, even the hardest ones, there is a universal theme which is the
fact that you are alive. You are alive
enough to feel all the things that you do, which is such a mind blowing gift. It’s
so difficult to put into words, but really what you need to remember is
something the great Albus Dumbledore once said, which is “Happiness can be
found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Beneath all the
pain and sadness any of us feel, we must to hold on to a love for life.
