Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,
Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag.
Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert,
Der Tag hat mich müd’ gemacht.
Über mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum
Drin singt die junge Nachtigall;
Sie singt von lauter Liebe,
Ich hör’ es sogar im Traum.
(von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Don’t cry for the lost, smile for the living.
Get what you need and give what you’re given
Life’s for the living so live it or you’re better off dead.
Song to remind me to smile and continue on. Song to remind to smile when I think of Opi. To not cry but laugh over the memories we made.
time changes everything
and sometimes it happens in a blink of an eye. never underestimate, and always appreciate the time you have with loved ones.
Johann. Wolfgang v. Goethe
Translation: If you keep someone in your heart, then you will not lose it through death.
The worst part, now that you are gone, are the times when I hear something that you would appreciate and now I can’t share with you. So everytime I hear german cabaret comedy, there is this internal sadness. I miss your laugh Opi, I miss your humour almost 9 months on.
Each day is a step forward, sometimes the ache disappears for a while
But only sometimes.
I think I have come to terms with the loss of him, but then again, didn’t I accept it months ago?!
Time heals all pain, some say.
Some days I’m sure of that phrase, some days I’m not.
It’s a day by day case.
One step at a time.
6 months on, it doesn’t hurt as much as did. Before.
Now it is just a dull ache, an ache that has never really left.
Sitting there, threatening to overcome my mental barriers,
My columns that keep myself together.
6 months on, and I miss him terribly.
I miss hearing him laugh, I miss him saying his phrases.
I miss my grandfather.
4 months on, and I’m moving forward. Ever so slightly. Life without my pillar, my rolemodel, my rock, and it is improving. I’m glad that I have so much on in my life, because that means I can’t dwell on it and get bogged down by sadness. But when I pause, I realise how empty life is without him.
4 months on, it still hurts like hell. 4 months on, and I miss hugging him. I miss seeing him smile when I did something dorky. I miss you Opi xx
Her life calmed down after so many emotional upheavels, for that she was grateful. Sitting on her favourite sofa at home, she stared out through the window into the millions of raindrops that were dropping down from the sky. She thought back to those times, where she thought death was following her, picking up people she knew, just silently waiting until it was time to pick her up.
She couldn’t remember anything particularly clearly, who wouldn’t after having a major pillar pulled out of her life. She struggled to find a temporary pillar, found that in her sister, and then struggled to piece together many aspects of her life. As the days went passed, she then struggled to find what the meaning of grief was. She thought she knew what grief was, when news came that her godmother died. All those months of careful stitching up threatened to come undone. At one point, it almost did.
She restarted the discovery of the notion of grief, and thought that she arrived at a point where she knew what it was. Yet Death thought otherwise. On the first day of spring, news spread fast along social networks that an old school friend had passed away in a horrific manner.
Yet her journey through grief, led to more and more discoveries, but it was a journey that is still unfinished. 4 months after, it still hurt to think about the loss of her grandpa. She recently found photos of him, hidden, and the waves of tears, sorrow and loss threatened to overpower her. It was like Death had stabbed her once again in the heart, threatening to undo her careful stitching.
She didn’t know if she would ever get over the loss of him, or even her godmother.
A friend of mine died recently, and looking back at the few memories that I hold, I’ve come to the conclusion that she did make a difference in my life but I never realised until tonight, when all of my classmates gathered at our old school’s chapel to celebrate her life.
I never realised that she made a difference in the way she smiled, the way she made it important to get to know each and every person. How she wasn’t judgemental. How she made sure in that short period of time all of her attention was on you and not half on you.
So if you ever doubt yourself about whether or not you make difference, think again, because you do. You make a difference just by smiling at a stranger, because it turns the day around, from a bad day to a good day. Just by a single thing.
