There are years, and there are milestone years.

June 3 marked 20 years since my son Migi died. Twenty years. The realization blew me away. There was both gratefulness at having come this far, and a tinge of sadness in realizing that it has been that long.

To honor and celebrate his memory, I decided to put together 20 lessons I’ve learned about grief and making it through.

1. You can’t bury grief and keep it locked up inside of you. The more you keep it to yourself, the more it will find ways to get your attention. It’s useless to put your grief on hold. You need to find a way to mourn and release it.

2. Talk and write away your sadness. If you don’t like to talk, write it, paint, play a musical instrument, run, cook—do whatever it takes, but find some creative outlet to remove the sadness from your body. Otherwise, it will make its presence felt in some other way.

3. Take good care of your health. The whole journey is impacted by how healthy you are. In the beginning it will be difficult, but eventually, and before you get sick, you need to drag yourself out of bed and walk around the block at the very least. Get moving and eat healthy.

4. Sleep is a necessity, especially in the first few months. Healing cannot take place if you are unable to sleep well. If you have not been able to sleep well for two weeks, and have tried all natural methods to help you fall asleep, you must seek the help of a health professional.

5. Time does not heal all wounds. It’s what you do with time, proactively, that will make you heal.

Physical loss

6. You don’t just mourn the physical loss; you mourn many aspects of the relationship. What you were to the person, and how he or she was to you, is part of the many things that you mourn.

7. In the beginning it will feel like the world has ended, and you’ll be mad at people for getting on with their lives, but eventually you will find yourself slowly doing the same.

8. Grief has many physical manifestations, including pain in various parts of the body. Get yourself checked, and if there is no plausible physiologic basis for the pain, it could be your grief seeking your attention.

9. It’s perfectly okay to cry. Cry as much as you need to. But it’s also okay not to cry. Each day will be different; listen to your heart.

10. It’s okay to cry yourself to sleep.

11. On the grief journey, you learn who your real friends are and you’ll be surprised to find that sometimes, they’re not who you expected. People you’ve not seen or spoken to in years may be more supportive than newer friends.

12. Don’t rush back to work before you are ready because it will only do you more damage. Unfortunately, not all companies are as sympathetic to the bereaved.

Help others

13. Find ways to honor your loved one during occasions that can be triggers for deep sadness such as birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas. Helping better other people’s lives or taking up an advocacy always helps tremendously.

14. You will always feel some degree of sadness, no matter how long it has been. You will always miss them, and that’s okay.

15. Learning to let the pain go little by little is not being disloyal. Ask yourself if your loved one would have wanted you to still be in this state three, five, seven years down the road.

16. Grief is messy and unpredictable and will hit you during the most unexpected times—
while driving a car, in the office, in the middle of the mall. But it’s also very healing to be able to release the pain than to suppress it.

17. Grief requires some solitude. It’s good to be able to share your sadness with others but healing will also require you to carve out time for yourself and your thoughts. You hear yourself better in the silence.

18. Yes, it’s okay to feel bad, or even be mad at God, for a while. It’s normal to feel anger as you grieve. You question many things, you think life is unfair, you question His love. The important thing is not to let your anger stay. I was angry at God for three days after I was told that my son would never wake up from his coma. I could not pray at all. But I realized that only He would be able to pull me out of the pit I was in.

19. Grief changes you. It is up to you if you will let your grief change you for the better, or if you will remain bitter forever.

20. You can use this pain for good. Little by little, if you allow yourself to stay open to the lessons your grief journey teaches you, you will learn to be more compassionate toward others, and toward yourself.

There is not a day that I do not think of my son. After all, a mother never forgets. But today, 20 years later, I have so much more hope and love in my heart than I ever did.

E-mail me at [email protected].