three years gone
How do three years go by so quickly?
Three years ago, one of the greatest humans and friends I have ever had in my life passed in a tragic accident. Miguel was my friend, my colleague, my roommate, and my family. He held space in nearly every part of my daily life. I recall hearing the front door to our apartment close that morning when he left to run errands. I went about my day and sometimes still don’t believe the call I got that night.
Losing Miguel has been one of the hardest and strangest forms of grief I have ever experienced. At the time of the call, only a few of us knew what had happened. It was unknown to the world and to our communities, it was a moment of truly not knowing what was next. How do we deliver this news? We had to, right? We didn’t want to, but Miguel wasn’t going to show up to work on Monday. He wasn’t going to release his next YouTube video. Who do you tell first? How do you tell them? We were in the midst of COVID quarantine. A phone call felt like the worst way. How do you share something as truth that feels like fiction?
I had missed the initial calls earlier that evening because I wasn’t on my phone. I came home late into the night, around 2 am, after learning the news. It was so quiet. I turned a light on and sat on the floor at the end of Miguel’s bed and felt completely numb. I had no tears because my entire being had not even come close to processing what was happening. I just sat there on the floor with my head on his bed staring at all of his belongings that I knew all of the stories about. He valued everything he owned and it all had meaning. I recalled what it looked like to be behind the scenes of him as our moderator at work for all of the virtual presentations we hosted. He used his suitcases as a stand for his laptop and his bed as his chair. I recalled the nights I crawled into his room from mine when I needed one of his healing hugs. I wondered how long I would sit there, knowing I had to get up at some point, knowing that all of the pieces in his room would never be touched by him again, knowing my life was forever changed. I didn’t want to move because I knew that would be the last time I’d have that moment in his space. I wanted to stop time and rewind.
The silence I felt that night when I got home is a silence I still often feel. Like where is he? Why can’t I hear him anymore? I think what I have learned about grief is that it becomes normal over time to deal with - you start to heal from the immediate pain - but that silence doesn’t ever go away. In fact, it feels like it becomes more quiet. Losing someone is a hole in your heart that will never get filled with something else. It just becomes part of you. And over time, as you heal, your heart expands around that hole to make room for more good and more love, but it changes the make-up of your heart, requiring you to adjust and learn how to exist with a new version of who you are. That hole seems to feel like the depths of the ocean...those layers of emptiness seem to just build upon one another as you dive deeper and as more time passes. The light gets a little dimmer and the silence a little quieter the deeper it gets.
As the three years have passed, my life has changed significantly. There are people in my community that have been on the journey with me, but there are also so many new, beautiful people in my community that have met and seen only this new version of my heart. I had often shared the beautiful times I had with Miguel as they were had. The outreach I received in the days and weeks after his passing was unbelievable. Miguel made the world a better place - he showed up in a way that reached people he never met. How do I keep those memories of him alive?
Months later, there were still people who held him in high regard that were only just learning of the news. One day at work, at least six months after his passing, I was sitting at the front desk and a woman walked in appearing a bit lost. I asked her if she needed help finding someone and she said “Yes, I’m here to see Miguel.” My heart stopped. I asked her why she wanted to see him and if there was something I could assist her with. Her response was “My child recently graduated and I wanted to thank Miguel for all of his help in that process.” I paused for what felt like the longest moment, not knowing what to say to her, but knowing there was only one thing I could say - and it was the saddest truth. In some ways, this woman was so far removed from Miguel’s life, not having interacted with him much, and certainly far enough removed that she had not learned of his passing. Yet, she wasn’t far removed at all. He was part of her community enough that she drove to campus to simply thank him in person. What a gift to be able to make such an impact. What a gift it was to call him my colleague, my friend, my roommate, my family. I wish I had talked to her for longer. My shock, and her shock, overtook both of our abilities to take a breath and grieve together, even for a minute. She hurried off, likely embarrassed she never knew, and I sat there speechless wishing I had just hugged her. I rarely was sitting at the front desk, so all I could think about in that moment was “Why me? Why was I the one sitting here at this very time?” I think about that interaction so often, and all I know is I wish I had learned all she wanted to tell him.
Mourning his loss has been an ongoing challenge. A life taken way too soon is so difficult to comprehend. Not only have I spent the last three years trying to understand this, but also trying to understand how to share my grief and to find community within it. Everyone moves through these emotions so differently - it shifts your world, your community, friendship dynamics, everything. This journey has forced me to reevaluate so many parts of my life and to find softness in my being when I feel like the world creates so many expectations of how and when I should “move on.”
And what I’ve learned is you don’t just move on - whether it’s the loss of a loved one, of a job, of a life you once knew - you can move forward, but loss carries so much weight and it only changes shape with time. It doesn’t just disappear. It becomes a dimension of your being, a new part of you that you have to learn about yourself and then learn how to share it with the world hoping to be understood, but knowing just like anything else about yourself, that you and only you will only ever fully understand. And I’ve learned how painful that can be, how alone it can make you feel, how it makes you want to shut your emotions off to show up in another way that feels acceptable to the rest of the world. But, I think the only way to ensure that the tiniest bit of light in that hole never fully goes away is to let yourself feel what you need, lean into the change, and be grateful that the sadness is a result of being able to love deeply. Even in moments of grief, your heart finds a way to hold space for the beautiful things you cherished but also finds a way to expand to let more in.
Miguel, you left a permanent stamp on my soul. I could write about it forever. I am so lucky to have known you. Even though our time together was shorter than I imagined it would be, the chapter of my life that you hold is filled with some of the deepest-rooted love and friendship I have ever known. You and I were moving quietly through the grief of lives that we once knew before we became friends. Somehow, it seemed like we caught each other before either of us fell. Your laughter and joy recharged my battery before it fully depleted. Life was beautiful with you in it. Our bond was perfectly imperfect - it was the purest form of friendship that I wish for everyone in this world to have. The only way I sometimes know how to still feel it is to put pen to paper and let the words guide me.
