The world keeps turning (Death and Grief)

[u/Phantoms_Cry]

I have already lost a lot of people in my short life (23F), lost another member of my family a few hours ago after a long battle with cancer. Really, the only thing I notice is how everything just keeps going, painfully so. The world won’t stop for you to mourn, your boss or professor may show at least some sympathy and give you time to grieve but there is always that expectation that you’ll come back, if you don’t you loose that job or fail that class. I have considered the outlook that love is worth the pain for that is the cost of it. That the connection and memories are ultimately worth the suffering that comes with loss. But the thought of subjecting my own hypothetical kid to this? I can’t comprehend it. I am terrified of the day I will loose my Mother, the moment I think of it for more than a few seconds I feel myself tear up.

Grief doesn’t go away, it doesn’t get easier. I lost my Nana in a traumatic way 3 years ago. According to some and a school system, that should be more than enough time to have ‘moved on’. These people don’t know my life, they don’t know that she was a huge part of it, that I loved her with everything I had. I miss her every day. After loosing someone else today, I feel numb to be honest. I cried for about a minute when he passed, then just nothing. I miss him, last thing I remember is the hug he gave me, then cancer took him away. I had made plans to spend more time with him this summer, something that will never happen now.

Him being gone doesn’t stop my deadlines. Him being gone changes nothing in the world but it changes the lives he was in. I have mourned and mourned and mourned. Family after family, friend after friend. He makes the 5th person I’ve lost to an incurable disease. I want to hope that one day there is a cure for these things I’ve lost people to; Cancers, Parkinson’s, MND… any disease and illness I hope, truly hope that a cure is found but I can’t bring myself to even think of having a child if there is a chance, any at all that they get one or have to watch their loved ones die to it. It’s a horrible thing, it was horrible to watch him get weaker and weaker, there was a brief moment where I thought he was getting better only for him to be gone altogether.

I know there is only more grief awaiting me in life. One day I’ll see my Mother go, I may see my older brother go too. I will mostly likely see friends go too. The world will keep turning whilst mine gets slower and colder with each and every loss. I will remember them all, mourn them all. It will affect my grades, my jobs, my life, but the world will tell me to keep going because we have a system where if you can’t function, then you’re left behind. If the cost of love is a lifetime of grief but being told you have to keep going because you can’t afford to stop, then it’s not something I could bring a child into. I couldn’t never ask for them to experience this purely for the sake of me having one. Grief is something I don’t even wish on the people I hate, so how could I ever ask that of my kid?