Quarterlife Diaries: ‘It's a strange rollercoaster of emotions, such a loss’

In Quarterlife Diaries I take you weekly through all the things I, as a nearly 30-year-old, encounter. Mainly to vent my heart, but also to give everyone who is in the Quarterlife boat with me a boost. You are definitely not alone. This week: loss.

I am a Sunday child; I have always had a lot of luck in life. I grew up in a warm family, was given plenty of opportunities including all the space to seize them, and I was always surrounded by love and family. A small family, because my father's parents passed away long before my parents even met. Therefore, the bond with my mother's parents was all the closer, the only grandparents I have known. Together we formed ‘a little group’, my grandma always said.

And that little group was nice. My grandparents were always there, despite living on the other side of the country. For every birthday, diploma ceremony, and very often just because, they would get in the car. I only had to look up at a special event and there they were again: as proud as ever. Grandma always called herself my biggest fan, and biggest fans always stand at the front.

As children, we were also often with them. I remember countless sleepovers where my sister and I could stay up super late (in reality, that was probably about half an hour longer than normal), where we ate chocolates after brushing our teeth (because that wasn't allowed at home) and mornings when we hid in their big bed while grandpa made coffee downstairs that he lovingly served in bed to grandma. We then got tumtums and a pack of Taxi: a festive breakfast that we devoured in bed. It was simple but so nice. We filled the evenings with ‘girl talk’, where we sent grandpa away to watch the news upstairs and I crawled onto grandma's lap to tell her all my secrets. Years later, we still did that, only I was just sitting next to her and grandpa could stay; he couldn't hear half of it anyway.

You might sense it coming since I talk so much in the past tense: last year we unfortunately had to say goodbye to that dear grandma. It was the first time I lost someone who was so close to me. It's a strange rollercoaster of emotions, that loss, one I had never been on before. At first, the little cart slowly climbed up and I felt like I could handle it quite well. I cried, but I had my emotions well under control. Now, almost a year later, that same cart is flying down at breakneck speed and I am overwhelmed by emotions at the most random moments that I didn't know I had. I feel sadness, loss, and fear of what is to come, because this will not be the last loss I will face.

Yet there is often a feeling of pride and love when I think of her. I resemble her a lot. I have her perseverance and sharp humor, and I was never happy with my eyes until I noticed they looked like hers. They were the sweetest eyes I had ever seen, so I figured I was doing just fine. I also choose to talk about her during moments of sadness and loss. I then tell about that time when I dared to jump into the water on vacation from one day to the next because she said: ‘What you don't dare today, you will dare tomorrow’, the relationship advice whose core was always that I had to pack my bags because she and grandpa had also been apart twenty times before they got married, that she always ‘blessed’ the car with three gentle taps on the hood to assure us of a safe journey, and about the countless times she pressed her motto ‘only rest can save you’ on my heart when I was in trouble. It comforts me to keep her close in that way.

It's something very strange, this grieving. The overwhelming mix of emotions is one I never saw coming and it will probably take me quite a while to find my way in it. Or maybe it doesn't need to be that way at all and this is just something that belongs here now. Either way, I will always keep talking about her. Because even though she is no longer with us, I remain her biggest fan.