There will be days when you will feel okay, ready to face the world like nothing happened. But there will be days also when emptiness will still be felt; days when pain will be more apparent.

Grief is a terrible feeling. It has random triggers, and every trigger will give you different levels of pain and sadness. There are triggers that will give you a tolerable sting; triggers that will make you cry; triggers that will make you think of the what-ifs; triggers that will give you regrets; triggers that will break your already broken heart; triggers that will make you feel that it is impossible to go on with life…and I could go on and on. But you know what I mean.

More than a year after my mom’s passing, I will not deny that I am still grieving. I will not pretend here that I have moved forward already. I still have those waking moments when reality bites me in the a** to remind me that I will not wake up with my Mommy preparing our breakfast and baon. I still have random flashbacks that bring me to tears. I still look at my mom’s pictures, and cry my heart out. I still go back to our same doctor, and wish I’m still going back with her. But the three most painful things that really make it harder for me to gain full acceptance are thinking if I have really done enough to give her the best cure she needed, if I have been more present/if I were able to spend enough time with her, and the pain she went through, because in a heartbeat, if only possible, I will whole-heartedly volunteer myself to have gone through all the pain and sufferings just to save her from them.

I don’t know how long I will feel all these emotions. I still take it one day at a time. I just let myself feel what it wants to feel.

But going through this, I discovered that grieving, however frightening and depressing it may seem, will surprisingly give you the strength you don’t even know you possess even if you know you haven’t completely healed from the situation. You just really have to go through it without shortcuts, and welcome all the love and support generously showered to you by the people who truly care about you.