Nicole Ji Soo Kim

A letter to those grieving,

I am not an expert in grief. I am not an expert in anything right now.

I’ve been filling one Moleskine plain notebook (of 3 pack) with various shades of grey since November last year. It’s been nine months since my father passed and seven since my sister joined him. This year, I’ve felt a turmoil of emotions as I attempted to process my grief.

I’ve held myself together believing I was handling this grief in a healthy and responsible way.

I’ve fallen into deep, dark depressive episodes believing with all my heart I will never get past this immense pain surrounding my heart and entire body.

I’ve tried to pull myself together thinking of my mother who lost a child without a partner to share this loss and my brother who lost the same, but different figures in his life.

I’ve pondered on what life might be after death and what the reason to continue this life may be.

I’ve laid between my bed and my brother’s couch without showering for 60 consecutive days.

I’ve binged unhealthy take out, smoked a lot of weed, drank until I could not feel and also until I could feel excruciating amounts of whatever I could not feel without intoxicating myself.

I’ve pushed myself to, still, partake in the responsibilities I carried to not affect those around me.

I’ve pushed myself to stop using intoxication as an escape from the life I am participating in today.

I’ve gone through months of pure adrenaline, hooked on the idea of moving forward with my life because all the Ted talks and books encouraged building a life around my grief; validating my experience will never shrink in size, so to move forward and build a greater life around my pain.

I’ve rediscovered friends who have been my great support.

I’ve deemed myself as part of the dead dad’s club.

I’ve deemed myself as part of a club within the club. A dead sister’s club within the dead dad’s club.

I’ve toggled with feeling extremely offended and completely non-cholent to refer to someone as “dead” because it’s an uncomfortable word facing the reality of death, but also that it is the mere fact that they have died and dead is only the adjective of died.

I’ve suddenly hated the words move forward, live your life, forcefully smiling with all my effort when someone compliments me on how well I’m moving with this pain.

I’ve also forgotten about the pain for weeks on time as I unintentionally suppressed whatever I was feeling and relentlessly lived my life being exhaustively social, busy and active.

I’ve been romanticizing the spirits of my father and sister; for the first few months, every time I smoked, I looked up at the sky and said hello.

I’ve texted their old numbers that I miss them and everything else that’s been happening in my life because texting them seemed more concrete than merely looking up at the sky and saying hello.

I’ve had ongoing conversations in my head as if I was talking to my sister. I’ve repeated past conversations a thousand times; now, confused if I am making up parts of our conversations.

I’ve obsessed over their belongings, frantically looking for their notebooks, journals, loose papers with their private thoughts recorded on them in hopes and urgency to get to know them even more.

I’ve watched and re-watched old videos of them until their voices became ingrained in me, so I hear it in my head whenever I want to.

I’ve felt my heart drop so, so deep and so entirely fast thinking I will never physically be able to hear their voices again.

I’ve been confused if my internal struggles were because of their deaths or my lingering unresolved issues from childhood and/or external situations.

I saw silhouettes of two figures in the sky, believed they were silhouettes of my father and sister, then questioned if I was associating everything in my life to them and their deaths now.

I’ve had bizarre dreams where I woke up and had to really remind myself they have passed and we held two funerals, I physically saw my father’s body get cremated, they are not alive, pretending to have died.

I’ve had a dream where I could not save my father.

I’ve had a dream where only I could see my sister was alive.

I found full comfort within myself, by myself.

I then lost this comfort, desperately trying to cling onto the next person who provided me with comfort because I was fearful and tired of continuing the work to find comfort within myself, by myself.

I’ve lashed our in anger. I’ve broken down crying without regards to when and where I was.

I’ve felt extremely alive, happy, and positive about my future.

I’ve felt guilty about feeling extremely alive, happy, and positive about my future.

I’ve felt as if my father and sister were paving the way for me. Only to question a few days later, if this was all in my head and I truly did not know if they were actually here with me, looking over me.

I’ve lingered in contentment. But it did not last long.

I’m unsure where I am now as I list some of the things I’ve experienced the past few months. But I’m coming to an end with my Moleskine notebook, which I have been calling my grief book. I tell the story of my pain without actually having to tell my story. I guess this letter is my story, but both you and I know there is so much left unsaid because I have yet to learn how to articulate everything that has happened.

Everyday things have become loaded as I am constantly reminded of my father and sister by just a cup of coffee or a day at the park. By just entering a grocery store and seeing my sister’s favorite dressing or baby carrots and packaged shredded cabbage. Everything is a reminder of them. And it’s nice - but it’s sad. It depends on the day.

I’ve also been feeling extremely at a loss about which direction I’m supposed to take my life. Like I said in the beginning of this letter, I am not an expert in anything right now. It’s as if my brain went blank the first few months after they passed. Yesterday, it occurred to me I’ve been chasing the person I had been before they passed. Trying to remember and restore the same interests, curiosities, knowledge I carried before. It occurred to me that I can no longer chase this person because I am not her anymore.

I am still trying to figure things out with sadness, anger and guilt clouding over me for long periods of time here and there, which I mask with genuine, dark humor regarding life and death. The reason I share this with you is because I need to speak about my pain and maybe you do too. It is hard to bring up conversations about how you are doing to others because it’s dense and difficult to construct into coherent sentences which seem linear to your experience, so others can understand - when your experience is not linear at all. The list in this letter follows no order. I don’t want to give you advice because I have no advice to give. The more I look into the process of grief shared by many others, the more I realize no one grieves the same. But let me end this letter on a few phrases my therapist helped me construct. Recently, I’ve been fighting an urge to fall into the comfort of my bed and stay there forever because doing that seems easier than getting out of bed and living. But I tell myself “I can do it. Because I am living. Because I can.”

So, here I am. And there you are.

We can do it. Because we are living. Because we can.

With love,

From a fellow griever

Nicole Ji Soo Kim