The Grieving Process Never Ends and That’s 100% OKAY!!!

THE GRIEVING PROCESS NEVER ENDS AND THAT’S 100% OKAY!!!!!! These glasses have a heart-warming story if you’re interested in reading on.

Our society doesn’t talk much about grief, and we honestly don’t give ourselves time for it at all. I want to change that by speaking about my own experiences with grief and how I handle it in my own life.

Losing my grandmother in 2014 was monumentally difficult and at the time I did not have adequate coping skills for that devastation. She had been a total light in my life— taking me in at age 16 when I felt abandoned and broken. For a while she felt like she was the only person in my corner in my life, and she would always tell me what a great doctor I’d be. My grandmother had been a personal hero… someone who had overcome much adversity in her life and an example of how infallible faith and willpower could pave the way to any future you desired.

When she passed, we had an estate sale and I remember how seeing the price tags on all of my grandmother’s things made my stomach lurch in sickening ways. Admittedly, I clung to more of her items than I should have because of this pain.

I have been doing a lot of cleaning out the past couple years and most recently I stumbled upon this old pair of my grandmother’s glasses that I’d impulsively and completely illogically saved. I recognized there was no utilitarian value to keeping them but the fact that they had once sat on the bridge of her nose and rosy cheeks, orchestrating the light from her environment into focused clarity within the pupils of her eyes made them impossible to part with back in 2014. It’s like I had saved them in the subconscious and impossible hope that maybe one day she’d return and I’d have them for her so she could see.

7 years later, a lot of my nostalgia has settled and I’ve been able to purge much of the clutter, but I again faltered when I came upon these glasses in particular. I reasoned with myself… I can’t keep useless things around in my life anymore… how can I make these useful?

A light bulb went off in my head and I thought… ah, what if I put my own prescription in these frames? I need a new pair of glasses anyways for school coming up!

And though it seems kind of silly, now it feels like I’m looking through my grandmother’s eyes when I wear these glasses… Like I can see MYSELF through her eyes as well… a confident, loving, brilliant, successful young woman that’s passionate about making the world a better place through medicine.

Every day I go to class, I will see the world through the same glasses that my grandmother saw her own world through. Every time I might doubt myself, I will remember to look at myself through my grandmother’s eyes. It pains me deeply that my grandmother will not be able to attend my future graduations and be alive to see me become the doctor I’ve always wanted to be… but these glasses help me feel like she’s still with me.

Honor your grief, for in it there is much strength ❤ in honoring my grief, I give myself the gift of new sight… 🎁 in more ways than one 😉

Much love, ya’ll, thanks for reading.