Struggling with Grief

So, my sister died.

I'm relieved, and even happy. For her. For me, I'm just sad and lonely and in a state of anxiety.

I wake up and think about her. In the first moments of waking, I forget that she's not here. I think about something I just have to tell her. And then I remember. She's gone.

It's so odd and disconcerting to my heart when I try to realize that she's nowhere here on this earth.

And I cycle through feelings of anger, fear, loneliness, despair, and guilt. Because who am I to want her to still be here, as broken as her body was, as tired as her soul had to be - just so I can not suffer all the miserable emotions I feel in her absence.

I talk to God a lot. I ask Him questions. I want to find comfort in my faith - faith that I will see Mike again, faith that she is better and whole now - but I don't feel quite whole myself without her. So, I ask God if time passes differently for Mike now; does she miss me or not? Does the time that feels so long to me not feel like but seconds to her. The time, I mean, between now and when I see her again.

I ask Him if, when we all get to Heaven, will we know each other? Will knowing each other even matter to us? Or does the connection we had on earth disappear in the bigger connection that we will have in Heaven?

God might be answering me in ways that I'm just not hearing. Right now I can't hear anything over the pain shouting in my heart. I can't even think past the noise of my grief.

Probably for anyone who loses a person they love so much, the struggle is between the pain of remembering and the fear of forgetting. One moment, you don't want to remember; the next moment, you don't want to forget.

Sometimes, I go and sit in Mike's room and just look around at her stuff - the stuff that doesn't matter at all to her anymore - and it all matters so much to me. And it hurts that it matters. I don't want to look at her clothes and her knickknacks and the little pieces of debris that mattered to her just a few weeks ago. Things that she would have missed. I'm both glad and sad that she doesn't miss those things anymore.

I wonder if, where she is, she knows how lost I feel. I want her to know how much I miss her, but I don't think that that matters anymore. Not where she is.

I miss my sister so very, very much. I'm waiting for the day when I can think of her and miss her without feeling so torn apart by this ache in my soul.

No one can teach you how to deal with grief. For me, I can't think past it enough now to even imagine how to deal with it. So, I sleep. I function. Somehow. I get from one short moment to the next. I just want to get past this unbearable grief and get to the point where I can actually endure it. Somehow.