By Europa Cabada, whose brother died when he was only 17
Grief comes in many different forms. Anger, pain, confusion, even happiness. Do not feel guilty for feeling all of these things or even nothing at all. There’s no right or wrong way on how you should be grieving, and tell everyone to fuck off who believes otherwise.
I still have a lot of unanswered questions, quite frankly I don’t think I’ll ever find the “right” answers that I’m looking for. Regardless, I can’t help but to continuously search because that’s what keeps me going. I never want to stop wondering, and I never want to stop learning.
I find my body aching during specific times of the year because of the trauma I went through when he was still here. There were days that I spent in bed because I couldn’t find the power to get up because I was reliving excruciating memories. Ignoring your emotions doesn’t make them go away, but finding and creating new beautiful memories definitely does.
It hurts knowing his daughter never got to meet him, and unfortunately she never will in our lifetime. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t stopped talking about him. We do everything we can for her to know how wonderful her father was, and that maybe someday they will meet again.
As time goes on I can’t tell you whether or not it’s gotten easier dealing with the fact that my brother’s gone. But what I can tell you is that I don’t think I would be trying as hard as I am now to become the best version of myself in his memory. I can tell you that I refuse to give up on anything anymore just because I know he would be the first to tell me to fight with everything I have. Because he would’ve done the same for me. I might still hurt sometimes, but I won’t give up.
About Europa Cabada
”My name is Europa and I lost my older brother Sebastian on May 3rd 2013. His death was deemed inconclusive. He was the most carefree and passionate person you could’ve ever met and impacted almost everyone’s life in the best way possible. I wanted to write this for his seven year anniversary because I want him and everyone to know we have and never will stop missing him. And I’ll do anything and everything to keep his legacy alive.”
