Analogies Of Grief
My Grief Diaries
At 12:07am on December 18th, 2020, my world crumbled into pieces. I learned that two of my best friends died in a car accident. Maddie and I had been best friends for over 15 years. I met Jake in 2017, he went with me to my weekly family dinners and was considered my “adopted brother”. Losing them felt like losing two parts of myself.
As the days and weeks passed after their deaths, I found myself racked with thoughts and feelings that no one around me seemed to understand. Everyone seemed to “move on” while I was left crippled with nowhere to go. My life became crowded with people saying all the wrong things. It wasn’t their fault; they didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know what I wanted to hear.
In an attempt to process all my new emotions and help others around me understand exactly how I was feeling… I started writing. I wanted to make a way for those who have never lost someone to understand the complexities of what I was going through. I wanted them to better relate to the people they wished to comfort. Above all else, I wanted those that were feeling the same pain as myself to feel understood and validated.
Whether you read this and relate to every word reminded of the love you have for those you’ve lost, or you are someone who wants to understand what it must be like to have your world fall apart, these entries are for you.
It’s interesting to lose things if it’s something important to you- your reaction is almost immediate. When you’re needing to leave the house and can’t find your keys you ask everyone around you- “have you seen my keys? Can you help me look for them? I JUST had them!” The panic starts to rise because you know you won’t get anywhere without them. You start mentally re-adjusting your plans in case you don’t find them, all the while getting more and more frustrated at yourself and anyone around you who isn’t helping you look. They aren’t in as much of a panic as you.
Because they don’t really need your keys.
They might help you look for a second, but they have their own appointments to get to and more pressing matters at hand. Their lives aren’t being affected by the loss. They’re more concerned by the amount of noise you’re making looking for them. You keep going back in your mind to the last place you saw them, but you know you’ve already checked, and they aren’t there anymore.
Over the course of days, the worry doesn’t end. The pit in your stomach only grows larger. Others around you grow irritated as you manically retrace your steps until every cushion has been overturned, every pocket emptied. You’re told to move on and get new one’s or to look somewhere else. But you can’t accept that they aren’t in your house- because if they’re not there, you don’t know where they could be.
And that’s just for some keys.
Sometimes that’s how I feel when I think about Maddie Fillmore and Jacob Edwardson.
But unlike car keys, you can’t just replace people who have died. You think about that moment you lost them over and over again. The last place you saw them. All the “appointments” in your life that you’re going to miss because they’re gone. The weight of the loss makes you sick and you feel like you’ll never be able to leave your house again.
Some days its fine. You find a new mode of transportation and it gets you where you need to go. But other days when you’re stuck riding the bus, you look at the strangers surrounding you. You realize they have no idea that you used to have keys to a working car. That one day you lost them and that’s why you’re sitting on this freaking bus. You look out the window and see all the things you used to see when you drove this route in your car. But it looks different. It’s not as comfortable. Then it hits you- you still haven’t found what you lost.
Your eyes fill with tears, and you think of all the places you used to go with them and understand that you can’t do that anymore. You feel just like you did that first time you realized they were gone. Exhausted and dragged by everyone around you who doesn’t understand or really care about the value of what you’ve lost.
Month one: Lost but Not Found
Some days I find myself in a place I once went with them, and when someone asks me, “What’s wrong” it’s not as simple as, “I was remembering coming here with them”.
That’s where I start- but it’s not where I end up.
Sometimes those moments and memories feel like a flip book. An average flip book is 8-15 pages per second depending on how detailed you want your story. So, if you want a one-minute flip book, that’s about 480-900 pages.
These tiny little snap shots of individual moments come into your mind and take you to another memory, and another one, and it all happens so fast that you’re remembering 900 memories all in succession. But the grief makes you feel like it’s in slow motion.
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, but 1,000 words may never be enough for them to get the whole picture. The world seems to stop around you because all your attention is revolving around the emotions of each outline. They come just as fast as the image itself.
Now, the purpose of a flip book is to tell a story and create a bigger picture with hundreds of little ones interacting with each other. As the depictions rush by, you see that together they make the images of those you lost. By the time you reach the last one, you stare at the now still pages.
No more pages to be flipped.
And it all happened in 60 seconds.
So, you flip through it over and over again just to see them.
How could you ever explain all the images and things that you felt in that minute to someone else? Sometimes it’s 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and the memories go back years and they each have such intricate detail.
The movement makes you believe for one breath that its real. But it ends, and you’re staring at a spot where you’ll be forced to bring your flip book if you ever want to see them there again.
It’s funny how memories that once made me so happy make me feel like I’m drowning when they flood my mind now.
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. But 1,000 words or even 1,000 pictures will never be enough- they can never recreate what once was.
Month 2: A Flip Book of Memories
I’ve gotten A’s in math class my whole life, but by no means would I say I’m good at math, I’m just really on top of my homework. I have always needed extensive help with my assignments.
I have these moments in math where I’m taking notes following along with the professor thinking “yup, I’m with you. Ok yes, got that. Carry the one, we’re good… I’m getting this!” We get to the answer and circle it and I think “I GOT IT!”
I then go to the next problem, and it’s like I’ve never done this before in my life.
I feel so stupid. I know I don’t get it, but I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t know what part is getting lost in translation. I look back at my notes and try to make sense of what I’m doing, but I don’t even know where to start. I see how I did step one on that problem, but I don’t know how to do it on this new one. So, I raise my hand and the professor comes over.
I say, “I don’t understand” and they say, “well what part is confusing?” I don’t know how to reply other than, “ummm I’m not sure….”
I feel the embarrassment as the professor goes back to the board to do the problem with me. My classmates look at me and wonder how I’m not getting such a simple concept, and their annoyance builds as I continue to hold up the lesson.
The professor starts on the problem, and I think “ok yeah, I got that part.” We go through the same process and my pencil makes the same movements as theirs. I seem to understand. I keep thinking “why did I even ask for help? I know how to do this!” Every step along the way I nod and wait for it to get to the part where I’m “confused” so I can justify why I needed this help. We get to the end, and I circle the answer.
I had no questions. I was with them the whole time; I even got the right answer…. but I’m still lost. Like clockwork I go to the next equation, and it happens all over again.
It’s extremely frustrating! It’s just not CLICKING! It’s not that I’m getting the wrong answer, it’s that I don’t know how I’m getting the right answer.
Some days I feel like it’s “clicked”. I go to her grave. I see his pictures. I have memories and I understand- they died. I accept that my calls to them will never be answered, and I can’t invite them over for dinner. I cry as I feel the pain and weight of it all, allowing it to wash over me. Then I wipe my tears, take a breath, and go on with my day.
But most days I feel like I do in math class where I can’t wrap my brain around it. I instinctively send a text or include them in my plans. I start setting the table for dinner, but I stop and stare at the two plates that are now counted as extras. I think back to the funerals, I run through everything in my head step-by-step and I get to the “they’re gone” part, and just like in school I want to say, “WAIT… What?! How did that happen? How did we get here? How is this the answer?”
Months 3 & 4: Complex Problems
I wonder if “closure” is a tangible thing. Something I can grasp and one day I can say, “Yes, I have that” in a similar way that I tell someone I have a stick of Chapstick in my pocket or a gallon of milk in my fridge. That it can be something I know is always there. I guess only time will tell.
But right now, I think I’ll compare closure to warm weather.
Some days I feel happiness shining like the sun on a warm day after winter. Other days my sadness acts in typical Utah fashion and brings an unexpected cold front.
A couple weeks ago when it changed from cold to warm overnight, I brought out the garbage bags and stuffed them with every sweater, long sleeved undershirt, and jacket I have. I was pumped- it was finally warm, and I didn’t need this stuff anymore.
I immediately thought “GOODBYE WINTER!” For two days it was great, I put on my summer dresses and left the house without a jacket. But suddenly it was cold again, and I had to pull out those bags from under my bed, untie the knots, and put my sweatshirt back on.
I walked outside and saw my breath in the air as all the heat was taken from me. I couldn’t see the beautiful mountains through the flurries of snow, and I wondered if this chill would last forever.
Somedays you can’t help but think that warmth will never find you again… But then it does.
Degree by imperceptible degree.
In places like Utah where we have all the seasons, it takes months to go from cold snowy winter to a nice hot summer. The passing days are so subtle that it feels like you just wake up one day and its sunny outside. That change in weather takes you to a different climate- a different season.
After visiting Jake and his sweet family in Fresno, I feel like I changed seasons. This one is warmer.
My exhaled breath no longer blocks my view as I venture outside. Everything that was once covered in ice has thawed. The trees that were bare months ago have started to come back to life, and my world has begun to have color once again.
The layers of my coat that were keeping the frost of grief off my skin are no longer needed every day. I don’t think I’m to the point that I can bag it up and put it under my bed, but I feel like I can hang it up for a moment. That for the first time in five months I don’t have to leave the house with it each day.
Maybe closure is like warm weather- some days you have more of it than others. Some days it’s so bright and pleasant that you forgot what it was like to be cold and miserable, and that time feels like a distant memory.
Maybe it happens in degrees.
Maybe one day I’ll move to a metaphorical place that is balmy all year long, surrounded by “closure” with only a few rainy days a year.
Or maybe I’ll end up being a Utah girl for the rest of my life, and winters will always be cold.
But for now, I’ll appreciate my newfound warmth and smile at the sun.
Month 5 & 6: Warmer Weather
Did you know that the three primary colors are used to create every other color?
They are the undertone for each hue on a painting. They are the bases for the beauty we see in every work of art.
Today I’m going to think of life as a blank canvas. With each of us being an artist, in charge of painting our story. Throughout life, each of us are provided with different shades of the primary colors, which are:
Red… The love we feel for others, as well as the love others give us.
Yellow… happiness. For me, this comes as I come to know Christ. Maybe it’s different for others, but for me personally, He will always be my base. My happiness stems from my relationship with Him.
Blue…the sadness, disappoint, and grief that we all experience in a variety of ways over the course of our lives.
Now these three colors, these three feelings, are necessary to create every other feeling.
When I lost Jake and Maddie, it added two new shades of blue to my palate. It wasn’t just one dark blue blob. Instead, it was two very separate and distinct stains of blue.
For the first little while, those shades of grief were the only colors that I could paint with. They were replenished with each hour, while my yellows weren’t as rapid with their refills. I dipped my brush in over and over and over. What used to be a white blank space of canvas, or a bright orange section, was covered and outlined in thick coats of blue paint.
It was difficult getting used to seeing these new colors all over my canvas. To realize that they were now going to be a part of my painting forever. For a time, I felt like they ruined the brilliance that was there before.
Some days all I can do is stare at the fresh paint I’ve been layering for months and try to remember what it looked like before. I stare until my eyes fill with tears and I add more. I paint until my hand hurts, and I don’t think there is any white left to be covered- only to discover the canvas continues to get bigger each time I dip my brush in.
Other days I look at my palate and my new blue tones and I decide that I’m going to do something with them. I’m going to make something new. I mix those blue hues with the reds of my love. I combine them with the yellows from the laugh’s my friends and I used to share. I blend them with all my other shades that I’ve gained over the years. Just like that, I have so many new colors I’ve never seen on my canvas.
Colors like lavender- Maddie’s favorite, and a pigment of green that reminds me of trees at the park Jake and I used to visit.
Some days I look at my canvas and what I’ve painted over the course of 24 years…and I want to start all over. I gaze at what I have, and I shake my head. I had envisioned something so different when I began. I thought it would be covered in bright, fun colors like turquoise and pink. Not the dark sections of purple and navy that seem to coat every corner.
But as I continue to pace back and forth in front of my painting, I admire its beauty. I treasure every tint of red and feel my heart fill with its emotion. I smile as I note the brightness of the yellows and the vibrant oranges.
My fingertips run across the patches of black where my sorrow combined equally with my love and joy, wondering if that’s why it’s the color we wear at funerals.
My palate seems to have more shades on it then Bob Ross ever had on his. I believe it’s up to me to work at discovering all the colors I can create. I don’t know what my painting will look like when I finish, but I do believe that these new features of blue will help guide me to a final piece of art more incredible than I ever could have imagined.
Months 7 & 8: A Palate of New Colors
Four days ago, I felt like I was flying high and then all of a sudden, I took a hard right turn into a storm of grief. It’s big and overwhelming and so hard to describe. It’s not something I can grasp and show you. It’s something I’m in, it’s intangible…. Like a cloud.
I feel like I’m sitting in a plane and when everyone around me looks up and sees me flying, all they see in the sky is white fluffy clouds called “grief”. They expect me to just glide right through them. Like when I say “I’m sad” they think I just have a moment or two of not being able to see out my window, and then a few seconds later, I’m out the other side. Once again cruising in a beautiful blue sky.
Where they see white cotton candy, I see nothing but thunderclouds. Dark and thick. Once I’m inside one it’s as though I lose my ability to navigate. I lose all sense of direction. I’m fighting to keep everything working as my system slowly shuts down. All I can see is the rain and lightning. It’s loud and all-consuming and I just want to escape.
Sometimes I’m in there for hours. Sometimes it’s days. I want to cry out and have everyone around me see that I’m stuck, but when they look… they don’t see what I see. They aren’t in the plane with me. They don’t feel the turbulence whipping me around while I fight for my life in a black mass of heartbreak.
They’re on solid ground gazing up at a possible chance of rain.
After a few days of being tossed about, I was reminded that while some only look up from below, there are “pilots” I can call whose experience surpasses my own. When I reach out to them…they see my storm. They willingly come on board and take hold of the controls because they know how to fly in a hurricane. They hold my trembling hands as the plane goes through pockets of cold air, speaking calm and reassuring words to my fearful heart.
There are pilots all around me who have been through a similar tempest. They voluntarily sit in my cockpit with me and look at the view out my window. With their guidance, I have begun to see the sun come through the clouds.
As I have looked to my right this week, there have been countless people in the seat next to mine. Their comforting smiles and gentle understanding have brought me peace in my storm.
Even in tumultuous times I can’t help but feel gratitude for all the pilots in my life that direct me back to clearer skies.
Months 8 & 9: Sudden Storms
This month I wanted a way to describe the fact that I never really forget that they’re gone. That they’re a part of everything- all the time.
Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? Or what about the times when
you have just one part of a song stuck in your head, and you can’t remember its name. You can’t even remember more than one line. So just that line loops in your mind over and over and over. For the LIFE of you, you can’t place it. You try and google the words, but they’re generic and don’t yield any results. You try and hum the tune into Shazam, but it turns out you don’t sound as similar to the original artist as you thought, and it doesn’t work. You hum, whistle, and sing those limited lines all day long.
But then it’s 5pm and it’s been stuck in your head ALL DAY. You play other songs to drown it out on your way home from work. You sing along to the jams that you know every lyric to, but when you park your car…. there’s that tune again.
They say to get a song out of your head you need to hear it all the way through. The feeling of catharsis only comes with the last notes, but you don’t have the full version. All you have are the lines you remember.
For the past 11 months, I’ve had melodies of memories on a loop in my mind like a playlist without a pause button.
When I'm reminiscing and eating their favorite foods or going to places we used to hang out, it’s like the volume is turned up. Just like my Spotify account, I have different playlists for different days.
When I reminisce the sounds of my grief can be endless little ditties that keep me smiling all day long.
Because grief can sound happy.
Other times, the ditties morph into motivational songs that help me keep one foot in front of the other. Like the chorus of “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten, whose lyrics and tempo persuade me to do the things I don’t want to do. They give me encouragement and determination.
Because grief can sound reassuring.
Some days their songs are in the background as I scroll through our pictures, making the whole thing feel like a slide show.
Because grief can sound comforting.
Then there are days when I wish more than anything that they were making new music with me. That they could come back and be here, so I’m not left standing alone in a room we used to go to, forced to play an old song.
I wish that we could be like Taylor Swift and remake all our old hits. That we could re-record everything and make a new 10-minute version instead of our old 4-minute one.
On those days of longing, every song is a ballad. Every lyric is sad. Every note breaks your heart. Over and over and over again.
Because grief can sound absolutely devastating.
I know that they're on the other side cheering me on, happy with how I beat to the rhythm of our drum and continue to make music that adds to their memories, no matter how happy or sad.
I’m so grateful to have their choruses in my soul to comfort me when I’m lying in a puddle of tears, but also to encourage me to get up and DANCE in the rain!
Just like that song you get stuck in your head… I know I’ll never be able to forget them. I look forward to the day when I will see them again and they can fill in those missing lyrics.
We will join our melodies from our years apart to create a symphony. Singing together until we reach the end of every line, and finally hear the concluding note.
Months 10 &11: Never forgotten
Grief… is like the ocean.
Inside it, I see a world not accessible to me on land.
A world full of color and things I’d only heard about before. A completely different creation I didn’t even know existed. Not until I moved to an island surrounded by it.
This year I swam in my ocean of grief.
I put on my snorkel gear given to me by my Heavenly Father. It not only allowed me to survive, but enabled me to see, breathe, and move through this unique and expansive new world.
But here is what others don’t realize-
Goggles don’t make your eyesight better. They don’t make the water dry up, they don’t make the color less murky, and they don’t make it less salty. Rather they protect your eyes from the burn of the water and enable you to see the world underneath the surface.
The snorkel didn’t help me breathe better than before; it didn’t give my lungs more oxygen than I previously experienced. Instead, it allowed me to breathe in my normal way while in an environment where it is otherwise impossible.
My fins didn’t teach me how to swim. They did not move my muscles for me or assist me in staying afloat. But they allowed me to swim farther and in longer stretches than I ever could before.
My ocean never went away or lessened in size. I just became a stronger swimmer.
I’m not going to lie, some days the waves were rough, and it kicked up the sand and made it hard to see. The swell of the tide kept pounding me down over and over, depriving my body of the oxygen it so desperately needed. Other days the water was still and beautiful, and full of grace. On those days of clarity, I was able to see my past life with Maddie and Jake from a new perspective. To swim in the memories of us living and laughing together.
Even though it is agony to keep treading water when your head repeatedly goes under, with your muscles screaming at you to stop the burning, to stop the ache. My friends chanted the words of Dory saying “Nikki, just keep swimming.” I felt them give me the strength to lift my head above the water and find the shore.
Then there were days I was tired…tired of swimming, tired of being wet, tired of wrinkled hands and having the bitter taste of salt on my lips. I just wanted to be done. To get out and have everyone stop saying stupid things like “it will get better.” There were times when the novelty of “seeing a sea turtle” (having a beautiful memory pass by) had worn off and I was left with a lackluster feeling of emptiness. There were days when I ran into “sharks”, unnerving things that I was worried might harm me. But as I continued to swim, I realized that I didn’t need to be afraid. That we could both exist together and that even the scary things could be celestial.
This year what I’ve learned about grief is; it’s complex, confusing, hard to describe, frustrating, heartbreaking, and exhausting… but more than anything else, grief is as personal as the relationships you had with those you lost.
Now, I live on this island in a home full our pictures with the view of the beach out my window. My sweaters are hung up in my closet ready for my rainy days. My painting sits on its easel ready for my new and exciting creations of colors, and their songs peacefully play in the background. I talk with my new friends on the bus, showing them my flip book. It contains thousands of pictures taken during the 15 years I spent with my friends. My life is not how I envisioned it would go, but it’s a crooked kind of perfect.
This island can seem lonely at times, but I see them- they’re here with me. They smile at me in the sunset, they tease me with the waves, they envelop me in a whirlwind of colors. I have learned an infinite amount since they have been gone. Each night the soft whisper of the ocean crooning me to sleep reminds me- joy in life comes when I make the decision to find beauty in the midst of my loss.
Everybody loses things in life. People. Jobs. Opportunities and dreams you thought were certain and would never leave. Unlike some keys, joy is something you can always find because love never disappears.
In the end, I think we’ll discover that there is more gratitude that can be found, than the grief that comes from anything that has been lost.
One year: A Stronger Swimmer
