Gone Too Soon

It feels good to love and know that you are loved. Whenever we are in love, our emotion, affection, and attraction to the one we are in love with, are difficult to control. Love could be that of a brother, sister, mother father, and affection of other relatives and friends depending on the cultural background we come from. As an African female child, I grew up in various plantation camps, as my mother had to go on transfer almost every other year. This nomadic lifestyle made it difficult for us to make lifelong friends. My siblings became my best friends and lovers.

I have a deep sense of love for my siblings to the point where as the oldest child of 5, I always worried about everyone's wellbeing. I always send money to my family to make sure they are eating healthy. I always buy nonperishable food stuff and clothing to ship to my family back to my home country. All thanks to the new face time technologies, we have been able to talk on a regular base. Being drowned in love for my family, it never occurred to me that death could visit so soon. Yes, death came and snatched one of us in the most untimeliest way.

All of a sudden, we lost a brother who was the pillar of the house. Grief sets into the family. As we were raised by a single mother, my brother who was the 2nd child, became the father of the house. He was that pillar on which everyone could lean on, in times of distress. I feel guilty every time I think of my brother. Guilty because I think there is something I failed to do that could have led to his death. I never for once understood the phrase " Gone to Soon", until the death of my younger brother who was called to go HOME.

The juxtaposition of love and grief has kept me very confused since the death of my brother. Every now and then, I think of the love we shared and the fun times we had. I realized that I need to cherished every moment I have with the people around me because tomorrow is not guaranteed. It can be really had to differentiate between Love and Grief, because these two seems to go hand in hand. There are days when I am driving and I feel like my brother is sitting in the passenger sit. Days like these turn to be one of the days that I grief. I find myself crying, with the hope that he can feel my pain. I long to see him one more time for us to talk in the hope this conversation could bring a closure to me.

I belief that love and grief are emotions that many people can share. The lost of a family member, friends, and other inhuman things like pet animals can make one to grief. How long we grief is hard to measure because it can depend on individuals and the coping skills one have to recover from a loss. It may seem very easy to tell someone who is grieving to take things easy because the persn is gone. The story becomes different when you are he one going through the pain of losing a loved one. Even in morning a loved on, that aspect of love still persist. Some times we might try to suppress our emotions, thinking that such emotions would go away over time.

Over time, I have realized the acceptance in me that my baby brother is gone for real. It took five years to let go after a memorial service. I find myself moving on and doing some of things I was unable to do during my days of morning him. The feelings that he may appear to me some day to tell me a story of what happened for him to leave so early on in life. That feelings that I yearned for five years in the hope of seeing him eating some of the delicacies I make. That feelings that I may see him to share all the wonderful successes I have accomplished in life. That feeling of hearing his voice one more calling me my doctor sister. The list goes on and on. In fact the pain is deep, and all i can say is that life must go on.

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