I’m sincerely curious about others’ experiences with grief. Death and loss are such complicated topics, aren’t they?

I’ll never forget the most hurtful thing someone said to me after I lost my father to suicide. I was twenty years old and had returned to college shortly after the funeral. A close friend who I’ll call Emma and I were sitting on the balcony of my apartment. She was smoking. I was second-hand smoking and kind of wishing I, too, was a smoker, but I refrained. I was deep in my grief, angry at my dad, while also reckoning with what my life would be without him. Emma had lost her father to cancer when she was seven, and we had discussed that loss several times in the past. I realize now how little about her experience I’d understood prior to losing my own father. Granted the circumstances were vastly different, but I remember feeling less alone with Emma, knowing she too no longer had her dad. I have no idea what prompted her words, but they seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Viv, I know you’re upset and of course of losing your dad is a terrible thing, but all I can think about as we’re talking is how you had thirteen more years with your father than I did mine. Try to think of your situation in those terms. It might ease your pain a bit.”

Emma was known for speaking her mind, but seriously, what in the actual hell?

I have no recollection of how I responded. My guess is that I was too stunned to speak, and so I likely nodded and remained silent, but this interaction illustrates precisely how individual grief and is, and how no two experiences, regardless of the similarities, are never the same.

I’ve thought about my conversation with Emma many times over the years. My father has been dead for twenty-eight years now. Since then I have lost two grandparents, my father-in-law, and one of my very best childhood friends, and three beloved pets. There have been other losses of course, but the ones I mention have hit the hardest because of how close I was to each of these beings.

I spent this past weekend celebrating the life of Gil’s beloved grandfather. He was ninety-six. He had a long and fruitful life and was healthy for most of it. He passed peacefully after a brief illness. The wake and funeral were fitting, celebratory and representative a long life well lived. Of course it’s always sad when someone we love dies, but I didn’t feel particularly sad. Maybe it’s my mood stabilizer. Maybe it’s the fact that I wasn’t especially close to him, though I had known him over twenty-five years. I was sad for Gil, his sisters, his grandmother, and his aunt. Most of all though, I think my lack of sadness had to do with the fact that his life seemed complete. What a blessing to live a life of entirety.

Of course I said none of this out loud. That would be careless and inappropriate. Still, over the years I’ve come to view Emma’s blunt utterance in a more understanding way. I’ve also felt what I now imagine she was also feeling so many years ago on my porch. A sort of bitter rage boiling beneath the surface. Resentment of being robbed of so much at such a young age. No seven-year-old should have to lose a parent. There’s also a knowing now in her words. It doesn’t matter how old I am or how many years have passed since that tragic day so long ago, I still feel robbed.

A childhood friend recently posted pictures on Facebook from her father’s 80th birthday. I loved seeing them, smiling faces of people I’ve known since birth. I certainly don’t begrudge this man or my friend and her sisters, but if I’m brutally honest, other feelings come up as well. Irritation. Resentment. Why has she had 80 full years with her father? Why couldn’t I have that? It’s not fair. As soon as I type that out, I feel wrong. Bad. Guilty. Ungrateful.

I see now a glimpse of what Emma must have felt when she spewed those horrid words at me. Emma had not healed. Emma had not yet fully processed her loss. Emma was deeply in pain and wasn’t equipped to empathize or handle another’s grief.

As Gil and the kids and I were driving back from his grandfather’s funeral, I noticed that I felt different. Funerals are hard for me and always have been. A byproduct of losing my dad at a relatively young age is that every time I experience another loss, I’m sort of transported back to my father’s death. I didn’t feel that as much this go-around, at least not initially. Unfortunately, I have felt that over the past two days, but it’s a bit different. There’s been a delayed sadness that has set in. I find myself replaying parts of the funeral while experiencing buried memories from my dad’s funeral coming to the surface. Why is this?

I don’t like that grief has peppered the majority of my life. I want to make peace with my father’s death. Intellectually, I understand it. I’ve studied mental health. I’ve worked with people who live with various forms of mental illness. I have experienced deep depression and mania. I’m no longer angry at my father. I view his death as a result of undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. He didn’t do it to me. He wanted to be healthy, and he wanted to live. He simply didn’t know how to do so considering the pain and anguish he was experiencing.

If I’m really honest, though, I just want to get over it. I don’t want to feel such a void. I don’t want the grief of my father to continue to be such a presence in my life. I want to feel a peace about it instead of the heavy fog that clouds the good in my life.

I think discussing some of it even it’s only through writing might be a good first step. One thing is certain. We all experience grief and loss. It’s inevitable. I’m realizing that I need to take more of a proactive approach. Burying my pain and trying to forget that it happened doesn’t work.

How do you cope with grief and loss?