#ReverbBroads6: I Think I've Got Heartbreak Down

The title is misleading.

Reverb Broads Post 6 (yes, I skipped 5. It will come some day): What has been the single most heartbreaking experience you've ever had? (By Kristen)

Oh...heartbreak. There's romance heartbreak, and life heartbreak. I'd like to say I'm more of a master at romance heartbreak than I am at life heartbreak, but that's not how things have fallen.

Here's my secret: I don't have a single-most-heartbreaking-experience, because my heart breaks with every loss. At first, I didn't quite understand. We were far away, and great-grandma wouldn't be there when we got back. (This memory is so vague, that I don't even remember if we were able to go back for her funeral. My memory says we were in Hawaii already, and that we didn't go back, but I leave the corrections to my mother.)

Then, I was confused - my great grandpa passed away, and I wasn't given the opportunity to see him again. That's just not fair, says 10-or-so year old Alex.

Then, I was heartbroken. But he was my best friend. I didn't get to say goodbye. That's not fair. This was also when I had some religious challenges (for those of you who don't know, I'm not religious.) At this time, I was struggling with religion, and the thought that someone would just take my grandfather away from me, without any reason or excuse, but with a lot of pain, made no sense to me.

Shortly thereafter, my great Uncle who had come to live with us passed. But I had just seen him the day before. This time, I tried to go to school. School didn't last that long for me that day, but the pain of the loss did.

I thought maybe, as I got older, that things would get easier. Brandon lost his aunt the first year we dated - that's when I realized, that it never gets easier.  I lost my great grandma when I was in college, and then shortly lost my grandmother.

While I won't say anyone was harder than the next, losing Collene was probably the most impactful for me. I'd had one relationship with my grandmother when I was growing up, but had managed to create a new relationship with her in my college years. She's been gone since I was in graduate school, and I still find myself dialing her number to apologize for not wearing a scarf on days when the wind chill is insane; to tell her about a book I read that she should find on CD or tape; or just to say I miss you.

Because that's the secret of heartbreak - you will miss those you loved (be they people, as I've shared here, or animals, like Shakespeare, Casey and Oz) forever. You'll be on a train, and a smell will waft through and all of a sudden, your grandpa Rex is sitting right next to you. Or you are on a walk on the beach, and Grandma Collene is there, too. You hear their laughter, you hear their voice, and you feel their pain -

but it never gets easier.