Mondays have never been my favorite day of the week. How many people spend Sunday loathing Monday? Am I right? Well, for a Monday today was actually going pretty well. I got up on time. Actually ate breakfast and took a shower. I even started working in my office to get things done today.
One of the things on my to do list was to clear out my email and Facebook messages. That might not seem like a big task, but I literally get hundreds of emails a day. Plus, I can’t TELL you the last time I purged my Facebook messages was. Between family and blogger friends, my Facebook messages are always over flowing.
There I was feeling super productive, and actually jazzing this Monday morning until I came upon this in my Facebook messages.
When I saw it, it hit me like a ton of bricks. This was the last time I ever “spoke’ with my aunt almost exactly a month before she died. I wish I knew then what I know now. I wish I had reached out to her one last time.
I never did respond to that message. Always so busy, and preoccupied with things, I figured I would surely have another chance to chat with her. I’m just sorry I was wrong about the last part.
Facebook gets a lot of crap about replacing relationships, and for many people it does. Local friends should use Facebook as the only way to keep in touch, and that’s total crap. For my family and I, Facebook was a way for us to keep up with each other. For Laura, it was for a way to see her great nieces and nephews so she always felt like she was right here with me.
Death of someone close to you is such a weird thing. You always wonder what is there for us after we die. I still feel like I could pick up the phone and ask “La, hey what’s up there after death?” I know that might seem morbid, but what we all wonder about, one of the great truths of life, my aunt already knows.
Laura passed away not quite two months ago, and things have gotten better. I no longer cry at some songs I heard driving down to her funeral. It’s easier and easier to actually talk about her, and what she meant to me. There are still hard days, and when the hard days hit they suck. There’s no sugar coating it. Allowing yourself to feel your heart ripped out again and again when something catches you off guard just royally sucks, but I know it’s something I have to let myself go through in order to finally heal my heart.
That Facebook message, was actually every Facebook message my aunt and I had sent each other since I joined Facebook in 2008. (Told you I didn’t delete my inbox often) Though it hurt like hell to stumble upon it, I am glad I did because I was able to read through some of the messages she sent me. It was neat to see her talk about her grand nieces and nephew (my kids) and share her amazement when Keiran turned 13 considering Laura was there for her birth.
Most of all I noticed how every single message she sent, she took the time to tell me that she loved me. That’s probably why losing her hurts so fricking bad. Laura gave love with all of her heart, and that was probably part of why she died too young. When you give too much of yourself to others, you have nothing left to take care of you. With nothing left people turn to things like drug addictions, eating disorders, and other substance abuse problems rear their ugly heads.
Reading through Laura’s messages brought about a lot of good memories. It also brought a lot of pain. I wish I had caught the very subtle signs that everything wasn’t as sing songy with her as I thought. It’s really hard to get over the feeling that if I had known Laura’s struggles, maybe I could’ve done a little bit more to support her like she supported me all of those years. That feelings just part of the grieving process, I get that, but it doesn’t make it suck any less.
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