Books and life competition. Edition 2

A few months ago, this same year I went through a situation that affected me a lot, two friends died within 3 days of each other. I am a nurse and I had to take care of both of them in their last days, after their deaths I did not imagine how difficult it would be to continue my routine after losing them. It was scary, I felt so fragile and at the same time I felt guilty because I couldn't do anything to save them.

I was looking for books to cope with the losses and I found one with the title "La ridícula idea de no volver a verte" (The Ridiculous Idea of Never Seeing You Again). The book is by the author Rosa Montero published in 2013, this book won the Madrid critics award in that year.

In this book Rosa makes a comparison of what Marie Curie, Polish physicist and chemist, lived through when her husband died in an accident with the grief of her who lost her husband when she fought with a very strong cancer.

There is a paragraph that stayed in my memory, and helped me to respect my times and my emotions.

It happened to me that I took my grief as an illness that had to be cured as soon as possible. I think this is a common mistake, because in our society death is seen as an anomaly and bereavement as a pathology: "We constantly talk about avoidable deaths, as if death could be prevented rather than postponed".

Rosa was married to her husband for 21 years and although the fight against cancer was arduous, her husband didn't make it, but the pain she felt so strong turned him into art, since her book can make those of us who have gone through grief feel that it is normal to feel bad, that it is normal to relapse and cry for no apparent reason, although in these cases there are plenty of reasons.

And after reading about these great women who were not afraid to express what they felt, I can proudly say that although we see death very closely, there is something that it cannot take away from us, the pure and wonderful love that we had the privilege of feeling and we will continue to feel it even though our loved one is no longer here.

Here is another interesting and very true paragraph from the book

The loss of a loved one is such a crazy and senseless experience that it is incredible how much a VISA card with the name of your dead person written in relief can disturb and move you.

I am an excessively sensitive person, when I was a child I was very ashamed to show my emotions so I repressed them as much as I could, what I did not count on was that as I grew up my emotions would double and sometimes triple, I could only accept that I feel and will feel everything.

But with death pain can not be measured, it goes beyond being a sensitive person or not, because you are emotionally strong you do not know if the pain of a loss will pass through your skin or will stay so deep inside that it will prevent you from breathing. But at least in my case I do know something about death and that is that experiencing it causes me terror, to the point of suffering it sooner than I should.

This year I suffered a loss that shattered me, yes shattered me, because I felt like I broke inside. He was not my blood, but he was one of those people who become the purest and deepest form of family, dad of 2 of my childhood friends and because of his care and attention to me, also my second dad.

As soon as I knew he was sick, I began to live a mourning, he was suffering from cancer, a very aggressive one in the colon, just at the moment I knew it I cried bitterly for what was to come to the point that I was so weak emotionally, that I was not very useful, which made me feel worse, my husband knowing how I felt tried very hard to help him, for his part and for mine.

For my part I limited myself to helping his family on some occasions, preparing meals for his daughter and wife so that they would have physical strength and not get sick and talking to them when they needed it, even crying with them. But always feeling guilty for not being able to help him, either with care or even going to visit constantly to distract and cheer him up.

To be able to see him took a lot of courage, as I said I am very sensitive, and I know well that when visiting someone who is seriously ill, it is recommended that we encourage them and transmit positivity and tranquility. How do you transmit that when you are in pain? When you are terrified that he is no longer there? I struggled because I had to see him, I wanted him to know I was there and honestly, he was the one who encouraged me, as if he knew exactly how I felt.

When he died, although I had already begun to suffer his loss, I felt quite weak, the pain was so deep that I seemed to feel nothing, only physical weakness and everything in slow motion. Thinking about what his mom, wife and children were feeling, was painful and I could not help it, so when I attended the funeral and saw them there, crying I could not contain it anymore, everything looked so dark and a movie played in my mind, with all those conversations, those moments, those smiles, only I did not remember them with gratitude, but with pain, with absence, with emptiness.

Dealing with this took time, there were several things that helped me in the process. But while I was living it, I thought of a book that I already know will not be the expected one: The Little Prince. I have read this book several times (sometimes I read it to someone else), the thing is that just as this book grew with me, so did my loved one that I lost, but only when I lost him I remembered a couple of things from this little book.

I know, it is too simple or cliché and also a book that almost everyone has read, but I tell the truth, maybe having read it so much and knowing by heart so many of its parts influenced me to think about it. With time and experience you see this book a little differently, as an adult. Perhaps it is the fact that the writer of the book went through many losses and faced different types of grief that in his letters you feel the absence, you identify with it.

In the book he talks about how an absence feels, the emptiness that a loved one leaves when they are gone, but he also makes it clear why it feels so bad to lose someone, and how this feeling, which is not so pleasant, gives birth to a truth with a very pure meaning and it is the fact that the only reason why it hurts is because they became part of you, "le domésticaste", it could have been anyone in the world, but no, it was your person in the world.

Before this loss I saw the ending of this book differently, but now I feel that it talks about death and the way we deal with it in a beautiful way Is it possible? Well, reading it we only see how the memories of that loved one we love so much remain intact in our minds, how even though the years go by those anecdotes, even the ones that were a little uncomfortable, become valuable gems that we keep in a safe place.

And although we have lost that loved one for now, everything we lived with him, everything that helped us grow and what he made us feel, is uniquely ours and that did not die. In fact the book partly focuses on how important those unseen things are, and when you lose someone you realize that yes, certainly what we have left of that person (the important things) are all those unseen things, words, advice, feelings and dreams.

I think reading this and seeing it from the point of view of someone who is suffering a bereavement, since one of the biggest fears is to be able to forget things about that relative, his voice, his face or the way he walked, it is comforting to be clear that we can never forget what he made us feel, what we lived with that person, the way we are in part is because of him or her, that is already marked forever in us, although we can't see him or her for now.

As I got older I realized that although this was my favorite book as a child, it is not a book just for children, in fact as I mentioned there are things about this book that you only understand as you get older, and it is written in such a colorful and simple way, that it is exactly the way you need to be spoken to when you are going through such a painful loss. Reading it again recently, already a few months after my second dad is gone, all I could think about was how grateful I am for what I have in me that is unseen.

I concentrate on this, while I see my hope of seeing him again soon come true, because I believe in the resurrection (as my second dad believed) and that our loved ones who have died, who are no longer with us will be resurrected here on earth, but not in the conditions we are living now, but on earth turned into a place where such horrible things as death, will not exist again, and that fear of experiencing it in me will no longer be there.

I hope with all my heart, that you can be thankful for what you have of your grandmother, those unseen things that death could not take away from you, and according to your grieving process, you can cope with your loss.

-Commentary originally written in Spanish, translated with DeepL.
-Images captured from the digital version of the book "The Little Prince".