When you have so many people leave your life completely and abruptly, you start to expect the next big loss. Not predict it so much as know there will be another eventually. It started early for me. As one of the youngest in my family I had Brothers from 13 to 20 years older than me, and Sisters 16 to 18 years older. My parents were in their early forties when I was born. Then they had my younger Brother James 2 and a half years later.
My grandparents lived into their eighties or more. So my parents had expectations of doing so as well. The loss of my Uncle to lung cancer, then both Grandfathers soon after, came when I was in elementary school. Then at 13 my father died, we lost my Aunt to a quick moving cancer, 3 months warning... I made it to 27 and then lost my Mother.. I can tell you now it was my most difficult up to that point to handle. We were close and had bonded so much after Dad died. Grandmothers followed.
Then my most devastating loss with complication of being truly unexpected: James had a brain aneurysm and after a weeks struggle became a painful loss of a person I could not have predicted I would say goodbye to. We grew up together, he was the only one left from my familiar family unit, and was younger than me. This largely became a confusion of what to make of the new equation I was faced with, to add to the loss of dealing with no close ties any more. My older Brothers and Sisters were out of the house by the time I came along, for the most part. I still deal with being the uninformed or left out of the loop member of my not so familiar family. They don't remember me at times... I feel inconvenient on many occasions. I can't say I don't contribute to that attitude, but their family unit {while not intact} still has members a plenty. A part of that group but marginally, they can't understand my viewpoint and I realize that. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It is just what I have to hold on to. More lost family members... cousins and Aunts, Uncles and more.
Memories become a part of how to deal. They touch the parts that make you laugh, cry and resolve things. A layer adds to the next and then the next, it becomes the texture you use to build your foundation on. Strength comes from within and the moments of reflection alter over time. You can still learn new things that make you reevaluate how you look at the bad times and appreciate what you had when you had it. Memories distort and integrate in so many different ways as new things are added or subtracted to what we know (or thought we did).. Perspective is a funny thing. How we view something alters when we find out things about human nature.
My Father (and yes I realize how formal the word Father is), was either highly distant or angry at me for minuscule occurrences. He could go from ignoring my presence to being pissy because he couldn't find his hammer and not so obviously I must have taken it. Unpredictable mood would be the best way to describe it and confusing to a child I have to say... unloved would be the way it felt to me at the time.
Some twenty seven years after he died and I had come to terms with him not being "perfect" for want of a better term. I took a college course on children of alcoholics... The second day, I saw the pattern that had been set up in his life that contributed to how he reacted to things... Did it change the past? No, but it gave me insight into the psychology of why he was the way he was.
Things don't get better right away is what I am trying to say, we adjust our thinking as we go along... on our own. People can't tell you that you should be over it or that you should feel something you don't. Getting things to make sense evolves as we move along and the path one takes doesn't make it the right path for someone else. But hearing others confirm the process is individual and too personal to be predetermined by someone else, was one of the only ways I realized that it wasn't such a lonely experience and that the things that bring comfort and even the things that bring strife build a foundation on which to resolve things within our own minds. This doesn't mean we don't long for the return of a loved one, it just means we can make it through one more day and open our eyes to a new one.
http://vimeo.com/19051003
