New Beginnings
Fig
Endings are funny things, aren't they? They’re not as final as they seem. Every ending is a new beginning, a new chapter waiting to be written, though often in a language we haven’t yet learned. It's the paradox of life: the end of one thing marks the start of another. But it’s not always easy to see that when you’re standing at the cliff of a great loss, staring into the emptiness left behind.
When I lost her, the most important being in my world, it felt like the earth had shifted off its axis. The pain was so sharp, so all-consuming, that I thought it would swallow me whole. Joan Didion once said, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” She was right. You can’t understand it until it’s your reality. And when it is, it shakes you to your core, makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world around you.
The death of a loved one is like an earthquake. It doesn’t just crumble the walls of your life; it shatters the very foundation. In the aftermath, as you sift through the rubble, you start to see things differently. Priorities shift. What once seemed important suddenly feels trivial. Susan Sontag wrote, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Grief is like that, too. It’s a state of being, a country you never wanted to visit but now inhabit.
In the midst of the pain, there’s a strange compulsion to revisit it, to sit with it, almost as if the pain is a tether to the love that was. When the pain begins to dull, it feels like a betrayal. There’s a fear that letting go of the pain means letting go of the person, forgetting them. But that’s not true, is it? The love remains, logded into the soul of who you are.
Sometimes, I wish to visit the sharp, acute pain of those first days after her loss. Not because I enjoy suffering, but because in that pain, she felt closer. It was a raw, visceral reminder of the depth of my love for her. As time passes and the pain morphs into something more muted, more bearable, I worry that I’m losing that connection. But then I remember, as Didion observed, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And our stories, our memories, keep them alive in us.
Grief, I’m learning, doesn’t go away. It changes shape, becomes a part of you. It’s like a shadow, always present but not always noticed. It ebbs and flows, sometimes crashing over you like a wave, other times a quiet, persistent ache. It’s in this process of change that you begin to find a new sense of self, a new understanding of what’s valuable.
I find myself reevaluating what I hold dear, what I choose to focus on. The superficial, the inconsequential, falls away, leaving behind what truly matters. In the end, it’s the love we shared, the memories we made, that hold the most value. And even in the midst of the deepest sorrow, there’s a strange, comforting beauty in that.
In this state of ongoing grief, I’m learning to navigate a new world, to find meaning and joy in the everyday moments, to appreciate the profound simplicity of being. It’s a journey, one that doesn’t have a clear destination but is filled with the wisdom of those who have walked this path before me. And in that, there’s a sense of continuity, a thread of shared human experience that ties us all together.
Esther Son
Last day of July 2024
When I lost her, the most important being in my world, it felt like the earth had shifted off its axis. The pain was so sharp, so all-consuming, that I thought it would swallow me whole. Joan Didion once said, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” She was right. You can’t understand it until it’s your reality. And when it is, it shakes you to your core, makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world around you.
The death of a loved one is like an earthquake. It doesn’t just crumble the walls of your life; it shatters the very foundation. In the aftermath, as you sift through the rubble, you start to see things differently. Priorities shift. What once seemed important suddenly feels trivial. Susan Sontag wrote, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Grief is like that, too. It’s a state of being, a country you never wanted to visit but now inhabit.
In the midst of the pain, there’s a strange compulsion to revisit it, to sit with it, almost as if the pain is a tether to the love that was. When the pain begins to dull, it feels like a betrayal. There’s a fear that letting go of the pain means letting go of the person, forgetting them. But that’s not true, is it? The love remains, logded into the soul of who you are.
Sometimes, I wish to visit the sharp, acute pain of those first days after her loss. Not because I enjoy suffering, but because in that pain, she felt closer. It was a raw, visceral reminder of the depth of my love for her. As time passes and the pain morphs into something more muted, more bearable, I worry that I’m losing that connection. But then I remember, as Didion observed, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And our stories, our memories, keep them alive in us.
Grief, I’m learning, doesn’t go away. It changes shape, becomes a part of you. It’s like a shadow, always present but not always noticed. It ebbs and flows, sometimes crashing over you like a wave, other times a quiet, persistent ache. It’s in this process of change that you begin to find a new sense of self, a new understanding of what’s valuable.
I find myself reevaluating what I hold dear, what I choose to focus on. The superficial, the inconsequential, falls away, leaving behind what truly matters. In the end, it’s the love we shared, the memories we made, that hold the most value. And even in the midst of the deepest sorrow, there’s a strange, comforting beauty in that.
In this state of ongoing grief, I’m learning to navigate a new world, to find meaning and joy in the everyday moments, to appreciate the profound simplicity of being. It’s a journey, one that doesn’t have a clear destination but is filled with the wisdom of those who have walked this path before me. And in that, there’s a sense of continuity, a thread of shared human experience that ties us all together.
Esther Son
Last day of July 2024