It’s been quite a year these last 12 months, or so, for me. It’s been a very trying year and one full of sadness and grief. Death has succumbed quite a few people in my life and I do feel like it’s not the recent end either for all of this, but I’m crossing my fingers that my losing people will end for a while. While losing one person is enough for anyone, I’ve lost four people over the last 12 months and it’s making me lose hope in life.
I believe it was just March of this last year, I lost an acquaintance of mine, but it was actually my father’s ex-wife. A woman he had been with for many years before he even met my mom. After my father and mother broke up, he and his ex-wife reunited their friendship. It was just a very simple friendship, and nothing more than that. They had children together as well, so that was one main thing that kept them in touch with each other. They had one child together and my dad accumulated stepchildren from her.
I really don’t know what caused her to pass away other than building health problems she had over the years. Towards the end, there was fluid around her organs and heart, and that may have largely contributed to that. I had talked to her off and on over many years as just an acquaintance to me, but the fact that she was close to my Dad meant a lot more to me in the role she played in my life than anything else.
It wasn’t until a few months down the road, sometime in September I believe, when my aunt passed away that I started to get an air of “what is going on here?” in my head. It was the wife of my dad’s brother. So it was an aunt by marriage. Nonetheless, even though I may not have been close to her, she was a large part of my family being as close as she was in line to being related to me. I’m not even fully aware of what had happened with her either. She was quite overweight and dealing with diabetic issues. At the time, she was in a nursing home for all her medical issues.
When I found out that an old friend of mine from high school passed away that following November from drugs and alcohol, is when everything started haunting me.
He was just my age or maybe two years older at the most. He was so young. The last year or two or more, I just remember multiple various Facebook posts about how he was dealing with seizures from the drugs and alcohol use, of differing severities. There would be maybe a small seizure here and there, and then at times, there would be a post from his wife about how he had a grand mal seizure and was in the hospital. It was a person my husband and I both knew since we had gone to the same high school at the same time. So we knew everyone from our graduating class and had mutual friends. My husband made a comment about a year ago on how he feared something could go wrong with our friend between all these seizures.
One morning, a post came across Facebook saying he was in the hospital again and things weren’t looking good at all. Later on, the day after that post, he passed away. This was maybe a week or two before Thanksgiving. He left behind a young daughter and a wife.
I could’ve maybe foreseen that possibly being the peak of losing people. At that point, I lost 3 people by then and I was haunted by nightmares of losing more people, and the fear and the grief that was stripping me of my sanity was bearing a colder hand on me by that time.
Then, in February of this year, 2024, my uncle went into the hospital for pain and sickness. This was my uncle who had just lost his wife in September I previously spoke about. He was my dad’s brother. He drove himself there for an issue which led to the doctors finding leukemia in his body and some other issues. They feared that they couldn’t treat him, but he had started to show some progress and they gave him one round of chemotherapy. He had been moved out of multiple levels of hospital care in regard to his either bettering or failing health. At one point they put him in low care because he was getting better. It was about a week later, it went south fairly quickly after the initial chemotherapy round. He ended up passing away on a weekend.
What is one to say about multiple losses in one’s life? How is one supposed to come to terms with one loss after another, especially in such a short period of time?
I had my psychiatric nurse practitioner suggest I partake in grief counseling but I haven’t done so yet, and I feel a certain type of way about mustering up the energy to speak my peace on grief and loss.
What I hope for going forward, is for one the slowing down or break from losing anyone, but I hope for a sense of renewal in my feelings and my life. I have since changed pieces of the way I live in terms of diet, exercise, and vices. Although, that’s only part of it. I’m still coming to terms with everything right now, but I need community probably more than anything. I’d like to know that there’s someone there for me, and I’d like to know that there are people out there, mainly family, that loves me and is willing to hold on to me through tough times. That may seem silly, but community and a sense of feeling loved through all of this is so vital to me.
As we speak, we are going through a time when my husband’s mother is in chemotherapy for stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
If God is so willing, please, I beg you to slow this chain of events.
-Newtus