“Death ends a life, not a relationship.” -Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie
People are often afraid of death. They could not imagine being departed from their loved ones or being a lifetime away. So when someone dies, people find it hard to move on. Some even become depressed to the point of ending their own lives just to get away from the extreme sadness they feel due to the loss of someone dear to them.
I happened to be one of them..once. To tell you my story, let me start by asking you a question, “Do you believe in forever?”
Being an only child, I undeniably grew up with all of my parents' love and care. They did everything that they can in order to provide me with the best future. Anything that I want, they had gladly and willingly given me so I reciprocally did my part of being a good child. I almost had a perfect life—almost. And then one day, fate had its dreadful twist on us. Summer of 2000, my mother died of heart attack. By then, I was only 10 years old. Am I too young to be on a heartbreaking situation like that? Should I be thankful that I was able to experience being my mother’s daughter even for just 10 precious years? What will happen to me now? These are just few of the questions that kept running on my mind back then. Actually, when that happened, my life was filled with questions that I don’t even know how to answer. I also became numb. The numbness in my heart and soul has caused something that until now, I regret that I had: depression. Yes, for quite a while, I became depressed because I lost my mother, my best friend, my first teacher. It was really hard for me to move on. I hated all kinds of happiness. I stopped communicating with people. I even ceased going to the church because whenever I see a family attending the mass, I felt incomplete. My heart feels like it’s being stabbed.
Fortunately, my depression didn’t last long. Reality struck me big time and so I easily accepted moving on. I began to view my life in a brighter perspective simply because I didn’t let depression get the best of me. The years had passed and I continued to live my life now, with only me and my dad. I still had my dad though and that is enough reason for me to continue living and move forward. However, things did not go well with my dad. I didn’t know that while it’s hard for me to accept that my mom’s already gone, it was even harder for my dad. He loved her too much that when she left us, it seemed that my dad’s world has fallen right in front of him. Sadly, while I managed to recover from being down, my father was deeply devastated and I was not able to help him get through it. On the years that followed my mother’s death my life and my father’s life was like a roller coaster ride. With the myriad ups and downs, I was almost on the verge of giving up but I had to be strong and endure everything, at least for my father. I wanted to take care of him, I wanted to make him feel that he’s not alone because he still had me, I wanted to show him my love but all of them are just short-lived. Six years after my mother went to heaven, my father followed—just as I was starting to go to college. When you’re 16 and you’re an orphan, what would you do? Sure, I am old enough to move on but am I strong enough to understand that I no longer have a family? Well, I had to. Since the day that I became an orphan, I firmly stood for myself. Who would do that for me, anyway? Right? Though life had been not-so-good for me, it was not-so-bad for me either. After all that I’ve been through, I am still thankful that I’m still alive. Imagine, if I easily gave in to the call of grief and melancholy, I probably won’t be here now and maybe I took my own life.
Now, if you’ll ask me, “Do I believe in forever?” Yes, I do. But forever doesn’t end when someone we love dies. Forever is eternal. Though they are not physically present in our lives, their memories are still worth remembering. When you remember someone who had passed away, it’s okay to be sad because losing a loved one is really not that easy but on a lighter side, we should bear in mind that they are now happy to be back in the arms of our Creator. But we can never blame Him if our life got miserable because we cannot pick up ourselves from depression due to the loss of someone. Not moving on is definitely a choice. We can always move on from something or someone that has caused us too much hurt or pain but sometimes, we cannot move on simply because we don’t want to. Death only ends one's life but we should move forward. Though they are a lifetime away, it doesn't change the fact that they were once part of our lives.
Forever is eternal. If someone dear to us become out of our grasp, still, forever, they will remain in our hearts. Whoever they were in our lives, our relationship with them will stay the same and our love for them will never fade. Wherever life takes us, their memories will always be there. In our hearts, that is where forever lies.
