Find Love Together – Logan Briana

It has been six years since I lost my aunt aka my best friend, my caretaker, my parent, my world, and so much more.

This year feels different. Kinda weird. It feels less like it happened just yesterday. A lot has changed. A lot hasn’t.

I am writing this in a coffee shop that I enjoyed six years ago. Today the life around it has shifted. It used to be connected to a bookstore that recently announced its closing and name change. You used to be able to walk or even sit in this bookstore after you got your coffee. I had a nice catching-up conversation once in that store with my cousin. Today, the doorway is now a wall making this coffee shop feel so different. My favorite spot and go-to writing spot in this coffee shop is no longer an option. Covid changed that. It was a bar of sorts up in the loft area of this coffee shop where you could look out on the main part of the shop. You could people gaze but still be away from people.

I live on the same road as I did when my aunt went into the hospital and when I got the text that she had passed away. I drive past the little duplex weekly if not daily. I get to witness some of the same people. I also get to witness what the current tenants have done to decorate the outside of the brick duplex. The place I began to grow into myself to be knocked down once again. I remember the day I walked home exhausted from the day of classes and work. Maybe an hour if that into being home, I got the call from my cousin saying that it didn’t look good and my aunt (her mother) went into cardiac arrest and was unresponsive. I had just texted my aunt a few hours before asking her what she needed. She was her normal self.

I remember coming home after saying goodbye (which for me is never entering the room and watching from afar). Barely being able to close the door before collapsing on the floor sobbing. I hadn’t felt more terrified in my life. At this time I was completely dependent on her. I had a campus job but it was four hours a week. I hadn’t driven a day in my life so she was my main source of transportation. The only other people or family I had were a fifteen-minute drive and had their own life that was busy enough without adding me to their troubles. I felt like a burden to everyone around me. I had to keep going. No one else was going to do it for me.

The morning I found out she had died I went to classes as if it was a normal day. I remember one of my coworkers asking how my day was going and I said, “My aunt died” and walked away. That evening I had a little reunion with the girls from my freshman dorm hall. I don’t remember if I had said anything about my aunt dying. I don’t remember much about that reunion to be honest. Except for the picture we took. My feelings had been so deep inside that I was able to keep doing life as normal as I could. So many people told me that they would not be able to do what I had been doing if they had the same thing happen to them. Realistically I probably shouldn’t have been able to. I think in my head I was so terrified of being on the streets and not being able to take care of myself. Also, it was right before finals. I wasn’t about to let what was already the hardest semester be wasted on my grieving. The world wasn’t going to stop on my part.

A lot like losing my mom when I was ten, losing my aunt a few months shy of twenty I had to grow up prematurely. While also being behind in other ways developmentally because of having to do so.

Even now when I am talking to my friend who is the age I was when I lost my aunt. There are things where to society she may be behind on such as not having her license or permit. I will talk about how I was doing this or that when I was her age. Then I end up saying that I wouldn’t have if life hadn’t forced me to do a lot of the things I did.

I miss my aunt daily. I can’t even walk into my kitchen without thinking about her. I do wholeheartedly believe it was for the best and at the best time.

She was in constant pain physically and mentally. She had so much happen to her that left her a broken child in an adult’s body. That broken child went to be the mother of three of her own children plus me. Though I believe she did the best she could. She didn’t always do the greatest job, to which her three children probably got the worst of it. I did get the best part of her but was still harmed by her. A lot of which I realized after she was gone when I was “free.”

There are times when I think about what if she was still alive. Would she come to visit me at my place? What would she think about how far I have come. Realistically, I was her main caretaker and I would probably still be that. Though I love to take care of people it doesn’t leave a lot of room to take care of yourself. Especially, in the way of a caretaker of someone that is unhealthily your everything.

I had to relearn to live a life for myself. Something I am still learning and probably will be my entire life.

There are many times when I will miss parts of who I was before, during, and after her death. I also know where I am now in my healing wouldn’t have happened if she was still here. Most of the vital people in my life came in after she was gone. Not that they wouldn’t have if she was still here, but they wouldn’t have developed the same way. There are a few people that might not have been able to do as much harm to me if I hadn’t been in the vulnerable place I was because of her death. Even those relationships showed things about myself that I am extremely grateful for.

Death is hard.

It can get you to live in the past a lot of time. It has taken hours upon hours away from the life that I could have lived. It has also allowed me to cherish parts of my life that I may not have.

 “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.”

Washington Irving