What is grief? Grief is the absence of a loved one. Grief is proof of love. Grief is pain. Grief is an entrance. Grief is confusion.

Why is it pain? Because it feels like your heart is being ripped apart.

Why is it an entrance? Because it lets things in that you’ve never felt before. It lets in depression, anxiety, fear, hope, faith, lack of faith.

Why is it confusion? Because your world is crumbling down around you and you feel like it’s burning. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t understand why.

Grief changes a person. Suffering changes a person. How it changes you though is entirely up to you. It definitely changed me in more ways than I expected. I feel like so many people don’t understand that either. I had to experience that. Friends who just didn’t understand and thought all I needed to do was fill that whole in my heart with Jesus and who thought I had had my regrets long enough just a couple months after she died. They just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand that that “hole in my heart” wasn’t, isn’t, from a lack of God, it’s from the lack of my sister. My baby sister who I had planned out my entire life with. She was gonna be a bridesmaid at my wedding. I was gonna be one at hers. We were gonna have talks about guys and our first dates. We were gonna have kids and make each other aunts. I had our entire life planned out and then she died at 10 years old. My heart wasn’t missing a piece because of a lack of Christ. For that matter there wasn’t even a piece missing. My heart has been shattered for 10 months now. When I was told I “have had these regrets for long enough now”, I knew that was wrong. I will have these regrets for the rest of my life. The day she died, when I was at the hospital there was one part of that day where I let myself cry just for a minute a couple hours before she died and I laid my head on her and said, “I should have watched those damn movies with you.” I’m always going to wish I had played with her, taken more photos with her, watched movies with her, and just enjoyed my time with her. The people who have known me for more than a year can see a change in me that can only be explained by my grief. Several of my friends met me after she died. All the other shave known me for awhile, and when I changed I don’t think they knew how to handle me. I had already begun changing.

To the people who have known me longest, I don’t know what you think of me, but I want you to know I’m not ashamed of my grief. I’m not ashamed of my beliefs. When my sister died my heart shattered along with my life. I stood in front of her bed as she drew her last breathe and those were the worst moments of my life. My grief has changed me. It is changing me. How it changes me is entirely up to me. I have not lost my faith. I will not lose my faith.

And to everyone who met me after she died, thank you. For being able to accept me, a broken, hurt, struggling, depressed girl who has no idea what to do. I wish you had known me before, when I was a lot happier and felt more myself, but you have all been so incredible to me and I can’t thank you enough.

My sister was always a beautiful person. I have so many regrets and all I want is to see her again. I love her so so much and now she’s gone and my life seems to get worse and worse. Somehow it’s gonna get better. Somehow. I just don’t know how.

“From dust you came and to dust you shall return.”

– Elizabeth