stories, people and parting ways.

some context: around this time last year i lost a few family members. and late last night, in that borderline conscious kind of state, it hit me pretty hard that a significant amount of time had passed. it felt surreal to try and parse the thought. i didn’t feel sad (okay, maybe a tiny bit) or upset, just strange.

then i started trying to tease apart the reasons why this was so. now, those half-sleep thoughts don’t really have writing-friendly structure so i will try communicating this in the way closest to how it happened in my brain.

• i tell stories about people that are gone constantly. i refer to their idiosyncrasies  and significant moments as though i would someone who was alive and active in my life.
• when doing this, i never mention the fact that they’ve died. i find it completely unecessary and unrelated to whatever i’m trying to communicate. (and really- it just bums people out and makes for awkwardness) i don’t talk about them to let the other person know they’re gone, but to share the things that brought me to miss their presence in the first place.
• you can think about people you’ve lost all you want, but once you stop speaking about them and sharing their stories (those which may or may not have intertwined with your own stories) i think that their memory starts to die.
• there is also something amazing that happens with stories, especially personal ones that wind down through family trees. they grow and change and truly turn from personal moments into complete stories. they become more epic, details get exaggerated and you may start to emphasise different parts.
• i have come to believe that doing this also changes the way i look at loss. it becomes more of an appreciation for this sum of stories that i feel fortunate enough to have and to have had experienced [with them]. in addition to keeping them in your active thoughts (as opposed to those rarely visited brainplaces) the act of revisiting these stories gives me additional insight and appreciation to who they were as i get older.

so tell lots of stories. and keep them alive.