A Heart in Two Places: The Struggle of Grieving Away from Home

     Grief has a way of making you feel smaller, I've always found it strange how life just keeps going even after all that has happened. What do you mean I have to keep going? What do you mean the sun will still come up tomorrow and I have to carry on about my day, as if nothing has happened? Grief pulls you inward and leaves you in a hole with your own thoughts. I also think it stretches you out, making every familiar place feel foreign. What I think is even harder than grief itself, is grieving away from home. That distance feels even more pronounced. It's the miles between you and the people you're supposed to be there for, the people who understand that loss in the same way as you do. It's the silence at the other end of the line, not being able to run to them and hold each other through this hurt. The absence of familiar comforts, wanting to be where you belong.

    Being in Arizona while my heart aches for my home has made me realize how much grief can be tied to a place. You don't just mourn people; you mourn the places that they occupied, the life they once existed. Being away from all of that, you're left navigating the loss without those spaces or without the people who share you're sorrow. I don't think it's just about missing someone who is gone, it's about missing the ability to sit in sorrow with those around you, exchanging glances with the family members who don't need words to understand what we are all thinking or feeling. Just longing the skies and the streets that hold memories of the person you lost.   

    Phone calls and text messages can only do so much. It is perfect for updates, kind words, for the fleeting moment of connections, but they don't replace presence. It doesn't capture a warmth of a hug or the feeling of sitting around the table laughing about the old memories we all once shared with that person.  

    Grief and I have a weird relationship. It has its ways of sneaking up on me. It's in a song that plays when I'm in the car, that I thought I made sure to hit skip, making my throat feel like there is a hot iron inside of it. It's in the scent of someone's perfume in a grocery aisle, that kind of smell that feels so close enough to a memory that it makes your breath hollow and you can't help but to look around for that person. Just hoping you'll catch a glimpse of them.  

    I am having to find new ways to carry loss. So I have began to start writing, which is why I am writing this today. Because not only do I grieve, but you all do too. I've had to learn to keep a photograph close to my heart and whisper their name to God in hopes they hear me from down here. I have allowed myself to feel everything all at once, even when the world is spinning way too fast, as if it doesn't know how much weight I am holding. Grief cannot be solved or fixed, I am having to learn that.  

    It is a love like no other, and I don't think I am ready to accept that. It is the type of love that doesn't have a physical place to go to, but it is proof of how much someone truly meant to you. It shows me that even from miles away, the love still exists. So even from afar; love remains. Home remains. 

    I suppose that even in the spaces between missing and remembering, longing and honoring, I am still connected to the ones I have lost. I am still home, even when it feels out of reach.   

    -Kass