Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

It’s funny how you can spend weeks, or months, or sometimes even years preparing yourself for a nightmare that’s more “when” than “if.” Then just when you’re fooling yourself that you’ve accepted the world’s end, and you’ll roll with the impact when it hits … suddenly, it might be hitting, and you’re not rolling. You’re collapsing, sitting where you stood, totally overwhelmed by a loss you were never really ready for.

I, like a lot of people, have unfortunately experienced the death of a loved one multiple times. This particular line I wrote while thinking of my Poppa, who died several years before I wrote this book. I remember visiting him in the hospital one day (which I did often towards the end), and realizing with certainty that he was going to pass away soon. At the time I thought I was grieving and processing in advance, and that I’d resigned myself for what was about to come. When he did die, though, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus—I was completely unprepared for that level of grief after what I’d thought was a period of bracing myself. Writing this reflection, I accessed some of those emotions, and I think I ended up crying while writing it from memory.