Too Many Funerals Before the Age 40

My Entourage of Angels: Coping with Repeated Loss

My First Loss to Suicide Changed Everything

I remember the day like it was yesterday. What a cliche way to start!

We were just kids.

Me in 8th grade and you a Freshman.

I was sitting at my desk in my room.

The day I discovered what young loss was.

My clear landline phone lit up.

I received a call from our mutual friend.

Not prepared to hear what was about to come from her crushed soft voice.

The moment my breath was taken from me without my permission.

When she could barely speak the words to tell me that you had decided to take your life.

Why? We were just kids. We had our whole lives ahead of us.

I was just with you. We just talked about going to high school together next year.

You were smiling that day and all the days before then.

You never told me how bad you hurt. I had no clue there was so much hurt inside you.

I would have done what we always did and made each other laugh.

I would have listened. I would have bear hugged you like you always bear hugged me.

That’s what we were meant to do because we were just kids.

We didn’t have worries. We had families that loved us, a great upbringing, and friends.

Why did you do that to your parents, with their gun on their bed?

How could you leave them with that memory?

How could you leave me, leave us, with that memory?

You were my best friend, I thought I was yours.

I would have given anything to have one more day with you.

You left this world far too soon.

My first young loss.

The Funeral That Shattered Me

The day of your funeral, well that was one of the worst days of my life.

“The Wind Beneath My Wings” was playing in the background, a song that utterly crushes me to this day.

Over 400 people were there in tears.

They ran out of seats and more people crowded around the outside doors.

That’s how loved you were—and you never realized it.

You made me grow up that day.

Something inside me changed.

We weren’t just kids anymore. You became an angel and I became dark inside.

That was the first time I learned that grief doesn’t just visit you—it moves in.

It changes your wiring.

And when you’re that young, you don’t even know it’s happening until joy feels foreign.

You know that year I lost my love for sports? And I was really good at basketball and you knew that!

You knew how excited I was for track too. I gave it up. Gave less shit about most things.

I remember one day I was sitting by your grave that laid flat on the ground.

Your mom came by and touched my shoulder.

I remember her saying, “He loved you so much,” and I just cried and smiled.

I used to stop by your grave often, even after I moved, when I would come back for visits.

Then one day I stopped. I don’t know why I stopped.

Looking back now, I think that was the moment I realized grief doesn’t end—it just finds a quieter corner to sit in.

Maybe that’s what peace actually is.

When Loss Keeps Coming

Well you weren’t the only one, so don’t feel bad—you were just the first one.

After you, there was much more loss. More sadness. More friends are gone too soon.

My mom used to say to me, “You’ve lost more friends in your short life than I have in my lifetime.”

She was right.

But what she didn’t see was how those losses taught me to read pain differently—to hear it when someone’s smile doesn’t match their eyes.

The Bridesmaid Who Asked for Help

The Guilt I Still Carry

It’s hard to cry.

It took me months to break down after losing one of my bridesmaids, a dear friend of 20 years.

She struggled with alcoholism and she was only in her young 30’s.

The really fucked up part here is she was trying to get sober.

She was a nurse. She knew better than to try this cold turkey, but she did it anyway.

At my bachelorette party we were drinking—what else do you do in Vegas?

Anyhow, she tried to tell me she had a problem, but I wasn’t hearing her because, well, we were drinking and having fun.

She used to call me her mother hen and she was my little chick. I was meant to protect her, I failed her.

She was asking for me to hear her and I was too distracted.

The amount of guilt that lives in me to this day—you have no idea.

You passed alone and that was not right. Your friend looking after you only ran out for five minutes and when he came back, you decided it was time to be with the angels.

Your beautiful little heart couldn’t continue to beat. The stress on your heart from going cold turkey was too much to bear.

I remember that phone call from one of our best friends.
This time I was at the airport boarding a flight.

I was cut short from that call. I couldn’t digest what was just said: “she is gone, she’s gone.”

My guilty heart shattered.

It took me a long time to understand that guilt is just grief wearing a mask.

We all wish we could go back and say one more thing, notice one more sign, make one more call. But that’s the lie grief tells you—that you had control.

You didn’t. None of us do.

Losing a Former Love to Suicide

Physical Pain, Emotional Silence

Then a year ago, I lost what was once a great love. 

Another gun to the head.

A great, beautiful soul who struggled with alcohol as well.

He then became ill in the hospital and had a gnarly surgery that ruined him for life.

He was in so much physical and emotional pain. I guess I don’t blame him.

I most certainly don’t judge him for what he chose to do.

 
He loved hard. Always did.

He used to tell me he would never make it to 40.

I thought that was always so weird.

Why would I want to stay in a relationship with someone who had little hope for life?

It was his lies about drinking that tore us apart.

The seizures kept coming and he kept avoiding the problem.

He forced me out of his life and I wasn’t really ready for that, but he left me no choice.

Another one, gone too soon.

That loss was different to me.

Maybe because I finally understood that pain doesn’t always look like sadness.

Sometimes it looks like pretending to be fine until you can’t anymore.

When Death Becomes Numbness

Oh there are so many more, even in the last few years.

It never becomes easier.

Things are just numb when new news comes in.

I now go silent. Like, “Huh, that’s a real bummer.”

I guess that’s pretty messed up to think that way?

I mean, I care of course, but the pain is filtered differently.

It’s hard to explain or put an analogy to it. It’s like it rolls over me.

Numbness used to scare me—now I see it as the body’s way of protecting what’s left.

You can’t cry for everyone. You just learn to live for them instead.

Being saturated in death at such a young age in many forms was brutal. It took a toll for sure.

What Grateful Looks Like After Loss

What gives me peace is knowing I have an entire entourage of you all sitting above together.

Maybe that’s my way of keeping you close—believing you all stuck around, just in a different form.

That belief keeps me grounded when life feels unfair.

What I will say is that through all of the loss I have encountered over my 45 young years,
the one thing I am is fucking grateful.

Every darn day, I am grateful. I am grateful for what I have overcome.

I am grateful for how I “turned out.”
I am grateful for the person I am and the heart I have.
I am grateful to love my husband and to be loved in return.
I am grateful I know how to show up and support people I love.
I am grateful for the life I live. And I am damn grateful for the people I still have in my life.

Gratitude doesn’t erase the pain—it just reminds me that life is still happening, still beautiful, still worth being present for.

That’s the part of grief they don’t tell you about—the light that sneaks in after all the dark.

There is no real happy ending here if that is what you were hoping for.

Loss sucks, no matter what form it comes in.I think I just wanted to write about that.

And maybe that’s enough—to tell the truth out loud, to let someone else know they’re not the only one trying to make peace with a world that keeps taking people they love.

Because sometimes being unstuck  just means choosing to stay open when it would be easier to shut down.