by: Raine
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It’s funny how things happen, big things, and still, life goes on. The lives most affected by those big things continue to go on. Sometimes the person remembers those big things; sometimes those big things lie dormant in the back of the person’s mind.
My aunt died. Well, she was found dead. I came home for the holidays and on the way home from the airport we received the call.
That was Tuesday. Today is Friday. Since then we’ve been busy planning the funeral. Aside from that, life has been normal. People laugh and smile, cry and fuss. I keep cracking jokes like the wise ass I am. I went out to breakfast with friends.
Then I come back and call the ME’s office about the death certificate like it’s something that I do everyday – call for written proof that someone is dead.
It just baffles me how I can feel two such different emotions in the matter of seconds. I can hear my mom screaming in agony in one second (it was her sister who died) and I’m laughing at the k-drama my sister is watching the next.
I kind of just wish I could cry. I don’t really cry for death. I cry all the time for k-drama and films and all that. But give me something real, and I’d rather be the person organizing the action. The tears remain stillborn. I tried to force myself the other day, but instead I just felt like an idiot.
Honestly, I want the funeral to be over. I want the greed that shows up over a dead person’s financial affairs to be over. I want to work on my k-dramas. I’m almost done with my Answer Me 1997 review. I have so many other plans for the blog. Cheongdam-dong Alice. I want to learn new cello pieces. I want to take walks. I want to brush up on my piano skills. I’d rather be doing all of that than dealing with this funeral.
That’s the emotion that’s the most difficult to cope with. Wanting to extract myself from this whole process.
We have to go to New York on Sunday. I don’t want to go. I want to stay home and go on with life and that makes me feel guilty. I don’t want to go clear out an apartment that literally smells like death. I want to be selfish. I want to pretend it never happened.
But it did. Now I’m going to go deal with it like a big girl.
Lisa Espinosa 
7 responses to “Life Goes On”
Sorry about your loss but hey, don’t feel like you are the only person .. I am actually just like you. When my father pass away, or even before he did when we had to sent him to nursing home because we were unable to take care of him given my mom had cancer, I have been the firm person making all the decision.
When my father died and my sister and I were with him at his final moment, I did not shed any tears. I did not shed any tears during his funeral process. For me, death is part of a life cycle that we must experience in life when we are born. It is life and death, part of our human cycle. I mean, I still laugh and crack jokes with my family as though life went on. I know I lost my dad but I knew deep down my dad would want the same. My family cried when we crement him but I still remain the same. Still my normal self, even my friend said so. I mean I wanted to cry so hard but for me, tears wouldn’t come so instead, my younger nephew cried in my place the day we crement him. And boy, he cried a river. And a part of me feel that from the beginning, my Dad had raised me for a day like that … he had always told me, the first time he was hospital and we thought we would lose him … he had told me privately that “tears is not a necessay proof that you love someone. and that tears do not bring back the death.” that was the day he told me not to cry … I guess in a way, I am just daddy little girl and more like my father in many ways than my mother.
And so when I loss my father, I went on living … every day whether he was in nursing home, or even on days I loss him .. I was still just a normal person living as though nothing happen at all …
So don’t think you are alone in that loss … there is a myth that people believe if you don’t cry, it means you aren’t sorry about the loss but the reality of that is that people cope with loss differently.
And I am sure that your loss loved one would want you to live on your life, not stay in mourning .. and it does not mean you don’t love them!
Thanks everyone. I just had to get it out. I do feel better with all the support.
So sorry to hear. My condolences & sympathies. It must be hard dealing with it all.
Thanks for sharing your very personal story.
I think I deal with things like you do.
Grieving is so different for everyone, and how you react won’t always be in time with everyone else.
Right now, you have to do things, and go places, and not things you and places you planned on.
There will be a quiet moment or two, when your heart has had time to feel the things your brain has seen in the last week, and you will be moved.
Thinking of you in this sad and unsettling time.
I’m not sure that anything I say will help, just know I’m thinking of you! ❤
it’s a weird feeling to deal with the issue of death. i ‘ve experienced it quite a number of times, with relatives who departed from this world.but it’s really something that we can’t evade anytime,anywhere, for whatever reason as we go through life.
you and your family have done your part for her well. and as we always say after a death, life goes on.
my deepest sympathy for you and your family, dearest raine.
Death is hard. Its especially hard when the family is not together as a unit. I mean basically when you made the statement about the bickering. Some of us are blessed with families that do not do that. When my father passed away 1 1/2 years, we left the finances to my older sister. To this day, I don’t think any of us care what happened. All I know is my Dad is gone. I don’t have that male shoulder to depend on like I used to. I don’t have the opportunity to be called the absolutely weird nickname my Dad used call me, Louie. To this day, I still don’t why. But once the tears go away, its the good memories that surface and helps us get through it. As my mother and her remaining sisters prepare for a trip to FL to celebrate their sister’s 90th, they all look at it as a blessing to still be here. Celebrate family and hang in there as you prepare to say your finally good byes for now to your aunt. Safe trip, the dramas will still be here waiting for you, especially our beloved PSH 😀