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Lauren Long (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

Goodbye. A seemingly simple word that has so much emotion packed into it. In some cases, goodbye can be good. If you’re walking away from relationships that have become toxic or where growth has ceased, goodbye can be positive and heartbreaking at the same time. 

Goodbye can also be good if a family member or friend has been sick for a long time, and even though it breaks your heart to see them let go, you can’t help but feel grateful that they’re not suffering anymore.

And then there are the goodbyes you never expected to say. The ones that come with the unexpected death of a loved one. The ones that come long before their time. 

The first time I said an unexpected goodbye, I was 12 years old. It was an evening like any other. My mom had helped me with my homework that afternoon before we joined my dad and younger sister for dinner and American Idol. While we were watching, the phone rang. It was my dad’s mom calling to tell us that my grandpa had had a heart attack and that she was doing CPR but he wasn’t breathing.

Without realizing it, I said goodbye to my childhood and its innocence that night. It was replaced by the realization that death spares no one.

Lucy Maud Montgomery said that no life is the same once the cold hand of death has touched it, and death touched my life once again that year, not two months after my grandpa passed away. In April 2004, we lost my maternal great-grandfather to cancer. His death was expected, my paternal grandfather’s sudden passing wasn’t. 

Five years later, in my senior year of high school, death came knocking again. In December 2008, my family and I had to put our dog Penny to sleep because she had cancer. In 2020, we lost my last living grandfather when he slipped on ice and hit his head. 

You’d think that saying goodbye would become easier after you’ve experienced grief and loss more than once, but that’s not the case. Recent experience has reminded me of that. 

This past summer, my brother-in-law unexpectedly lost two cousins within five days of each other. I’ll never forget the morning my sister called and told us that one had passed away and the other was in a coma, nor the following five days of uncertainty mixed with hope that he would wake up. 

I didn’t know one of the cousins very well, but I knew the one who was in the coma. We’d spent time together when I went to visit my sister and brother-in-law, and we were in their bridal party. The days leading up to the wedding, I got to know him a little more, and I remember laughing as he spun me on the dance floor while attempting to teach me how to two-step, something my brother-in-law, his siblings and cousins all knew how to do. 

I remember feeling the happiness that comes with weddings, where everything else is blocked out because you’re living in the moment, and what I felt was that a new chapter was opening where I would have relationships with my brother-in-law’s cousins. I never let myself think that it would be different. I never thought that that night would be the last time I saw his cousin alive. 

The five days of waiting and sleepless nights came to a head when my brother-in-law got the call that his cousin didn’t make it through the night while my mom and I were on FaceTime with him and my sister. That moment is burned into my memory, and will be until my dying day. 

The five days of hell turned into months of grief. The losses of two young men who had their whole lives ahead of them shattered my heart, and for a while it was missing, a hole in my chest cavity. When it came back, the beats were painful and my heart was drenched in pain.

These last few months, I’ve been through every what-if, every stage of the five stages of grief. Some people creep into your heart quietly, and you don’t realize that they have a piece of it until they’re gone.

Not only did I say goodbye to my brother-in-law’s cousin, I said goodbye to myself too. I lost myself in the waves of grief, and though I’m beginning to find my way back, I know I will never be the person I was before this summer again. 

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Born and raised in Quesnel, BC, Lauren Long is a strong advocate for mental health and well-being. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the pole, on the training mats or curled up with a good book.