I am waiting for my train back home tonight after an unexpected death in the family. My 22 year old nephew, young, kind, funny, and finally happy with his life was killed in a car accident on Sunday.
His car didn't have air bags, and instead of walking away with scratches from the accident, he is gone.
As I attended his funeral and burial, I tried to focus on acceptance and I avoided questioning and bemoaning the unfairness of the situation. I'm certainly not a psychologist, but those are the things that took me some time to get over when it came to grieving for my dad. They seemed like appropriate goals for the initial process of saying goodbye.
The next few weeks will determine whether the following hypothesis is true, but I think I'm entering the shock gap. This is the time after the funeral and your initial grieving where you return home, get back into your routines, and the familiarity hides the loss. Adam wasn't part of my daily life. Every few weeks I would see he had updated his Facebook status or put up new pictures, and I would check on him. I think there may be a period of a few weeks where I forget the loss. Then, out of the blue, something will remind me, and the grief will come back.
The loss of someone so young, with a full life ahead of him, is hard. I was reflecting on the situation yesterday and realized I expected to be dancing the Irish jig at his wedding in a few years. The period of shock in losing someone so young could last for longer than I anticipate.
Airbags save lives.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Friday, January 16, 2009
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