I know they say that grief is something you grow around and becomes a part of you. Ever since I was diagnosed with cancer, I have been feeling my grief towards the death of my mother very intensely. My mom had cancer in the same area I do, but it was a different type (think skin vs. bone), and I just wish I could talk to her and ask her how she made it through her own battle with cancer.

Shortly after my mother died, my husband tried to recommend some Switch games for me to play to distract me. I am a huge console gamer; I love playing on the PS5, Switch, and Steam Deck. The first game my husband recommended for me to play was called Cozy Grove, a game where you play as a Spirit Scout, and you meet the souls of those who have passed on, and you have to help them find peace. I bawled for the first 10 minutes when I played it.

Somehow, after Cozy Grove, I played a game called Spirit Farer. In it, you play as a former nurse tasked with finding souls stuck in purgatory, learning from them, and helping them pass on. The worst part for me was that some spirits involved people involved in the protagonist’s life, family members or close friends, and former patients. One of the spirits is a child who doesn’t understand how sick he is and wants to stay strong for his mom. I couldn’t even completely finish the game; once I met the child character, I cried so hard I hyperventilated.

One of the most beautiful games I played was Gris. The protagonist is a young girl trying to cope with her mother’s death. As the game progresses, you can see the world through the eyes of the young girl. The world starts in warm-toned colors, red and orange, and as she grows and processes her emotions, it becomes more colorful. The world also develops more; in the beginning, it is almost apocalyptic.

I struggle a lot with grief and the concept of death and the afterlife. It boggles my mind how people can be at peace and comfort with it, and it was something I was afraid of but had the luxury to ignore until I was diagnosed with cancer. I was then faced with my biggest fear, my own mortality. I had to sit and reconcile with the genuine possibility of my own life being cut short. I hate the thought of leaving my husband, dog, siblings, and dad behind. I hate that there is no concrete answer for what happens when we die; I hate that when those we love pass on, they don’t come back with signs or warnings to let us know what happens after the drip stops.

It makes me so sad to think of leaving my loved ones behind, to leave them with all the grief, and I won’t be there to shoulder such grief, and it twists my heart to think I would be the cause of the suffering. If the grief they feel is even a fraction of what I felt when my mom died, then I would be severely concerned, I truly thought within the first months after my mom’s death, I was going to die of a broken heart.

I find it cruel that the universe allows us to meet and fall in love with such wonderful,and then takes them away from us, leaving us to carry their memories powerful souls with us.

I haven’t brought myself to delete my mom’s contact from my phone, though my oldest brother now uses it. I nearly screamed when he called me, and I saw my mom’s photo come up. I wanted to sink into the floor when a coworker asked me how my mom was a year and a half after she died.

My mom died the day my wedding bouquet was delivered; it was waiting on my doorstep when I got home at 3am. It was a punch in the gut when the custom wedding favors came in, and her name was etched in on them. There was a massive, massive absence of her at my wedding, there was an empty chair at the dinner for it, it was served a meal and a slice of cake, both went untouched until my father boxed it up and took it home, along with her favor.

I will never forget standing 6 feet behind my father leaving the church after my mom’s service. The sun was shining, and his silhouette was dark, and he stood in the entryway, and he watched as 6 pallbearers took the love of his life away.

It hurt so fucking bad the day my mom died as we surrounded her hospital bed and asked her what she wanted to do next, and my dad said to her, “The buck stops here, baby. There’s nothing else to do.”

I cried and cried for days, I reached for my phone every day for months to call her, only to remember she wasn’t going to answer. I’ve never deleted our text conversations, and I hold every photo I have of her close to my heart.

I loved her so intensely that the loss of her hurts just as much.

-Jane