Dear Maria,

I’ve been turning the word lost over in my mind for days.

We say we’ve lost someone we love. We talk about loss and its aftermath. But what does that mean? Why did we choose that term? Do we say lost because we’re afraid to say died? Is it because we don’t know where our loved ones go when they’re no longer physically here? Or is it because we are deprived of a future we were supposed to have? 

I’ve used the expression a thousand times. 

I lost you, my sister. 

I’m dealing with the aftermath of a significant loss. 

I’ve thought and talked about the legacy I want to build as a result of losing you.

I don’t want to say I lost you because I’m to afraid to say that you died. I don’t want to cover up your death with niceties to make it less scary. It was terrifying. You fought hard to live and you accepted death with courage. I want to honour that. 

I don’t want to feel that I lost you when you died, like a misplaced set of keys that I’m searching for. The love I feel for you didn’t disappear and I can still feel how much you loved me. That sisterly connection isn’t lost, it’s still there, just changing form. You’re not physically here, that much I understand, but I want to believe that you’re somewhere that my rational mind doesn’t quite know. I don’t want to think of your soul as lost, as someone that can’t find their way. I can’t find you, but I can feel you and the impact you had on me. 

When you died, I didn’t lose the 27 years we shared. I get to keep those and they are a gift. I don’t want to say I lost you because I didn’t lose all of you. I didn’t lose everything you’d already given me. Your life had meaning. I’ve seen the impact you had on everyone that knew you. Even your death, in all of it’s unfairness and pain, showed me and everyone close to you the depth of love we are capable of and what being truly brave looks like. Those are not losses.  

But we did lose the future we had envisioned. You had to give up every single dream and hope you had for your life. You did not get to experience your honeymoon. You did not feel the joy of becoming a mother. You did not get to experience life past your twenties. I lost the person I could call for anything. The aunt who hugged and played with my children like they were her own. The sister I was supposed to grow old and grey with. That life, we did lose. You were deprived of that future and I’m not sure I will ever fully understand why. 

Perhaps that’s what we’re referring to when we say we lost someone. We - they - are deprived of everything they were meant to become. We - they - are deprived of the life that we wanted to unfold, everything that we envisioned would come. That future is traded in for a pain that we will spend years making sense of and a life that we have to rewrite without the physical presence of someone we love fiercely. 

That future is traded in for a journey that we would never choose ourselves, but one which we nonetheless, have to accept. 

Until we meet again,

Jess