Not so Good at Goodbyes
April 2, 2024
Writer: Jasmine Seiden
Editor: Ryan Hammel
I prioritized saying a proper and heartfelt 'goodbye' to everyone who mattered to me before I left for my freshman year at Tulane. Therefore, when I arrived in New Orleans with my completed checklist of goodbyes, I believed I had all the closure I would need to embark on my college journey.
I was wrong. There was one person in my life, not included on my checklist, that I never got to say a proper and heartfelt 'goodbye' to my sister. The fourth anniversary of my older sister's death had passed just a month before I left for school. I bottled up all my feelings surrounding July 22nd so I could start college with the "normal" stresses everyone experiences, like the feeling of missing home and family. I was terrified of hindering my reputation and being known as the ‘sad girl’.
During the first weeks of school, not only did the feelings around the fourth anniversary start to build, but I was experiencing an intense wave of grief that I hadn't been through in years. To keep up with my facade of normalcy, I pushed my grief farther away from the surface and acted like the only sadness I felt stemmed from homesickness. I smiled, laughed, went out with my new friends, and succeeded academically. I had everyone fooled but myself.
A month into school, I could no longer contain the pain I felt about missing my sister. I was exhausted from acting like I had it all together. I heard the Journey song Don't Stop Believing playing in a Starbucks one day, the song that my sister sang and won a talent show with one year, and the song that always seems to find me when I am missing her.
Later that same evening, it hit me. I let myself feel everything I had suppressed since the summer. I spent the whole night on the phone with my mom, quietly sobbing and wishing she wasn't a plane ride away. That night, I finally revealed and accepted to myself why I was severely stricken with grief. I had completed a whole chapter of my life, high school, and started a whole new one, college, without the guidance and support from my sister. My sister and I were only one grade level apart in school, which meant that she was a rising sophomore in high school when she passed. She never got to graduate high school and never even began to think about college. I was now three years older than my big sister ever was and had lived through milestone experiences that she never did.
For every other transition in my life, my sister had been my anchor. She walked into school with me on the first day of preschool, she gifted me a stuffed animal at the bus stop for my first summer at sleepaway camp, she assembled a care package for me when I started middle school, and she told me to trust my gut and to be myself in high school.–Four years later, I could no longer rely on her support to ease the transition into college. It was all on me, and it felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders.
From that day forward, I made an important promise to myself that I would let my grief in. I would allow myself to cry when I missed her, I would do things that reminded me of her, I would talk to her, and when I wanted to, I would share the load of grief with family and friends. I knew that letting my grief become a part of my life was the only way to heal.
Due to this new approach, I started sharing my college experience with my sister as if we were doing it together. Instead of skipping my sister and my favorite songs on a walk, I would blast them and sing softly to myself. I bought her favorite sour candies from the supermarket and would think about how she would trade chocolates for anything sour on Halloween. I journaled about my day and would read them aloud as if I were directly telling her what I was up to. I'd reflect on how she'd react to my stories, knowing she'd be giving her unfiltered and unsolicited opinion on everything. When doing these acts, I'd laugh, smile, and cry, sometimes simultaneously, each time. I now always leave room for the tears and recognize them as a reminder of how much I love my sister.
As time went on, I realized I was happy. I no longer acted like I was enjoying my life because I was genuinely enjoying it. I naturally stopped sharing my everyday stories with my sister and would sometimes skip a favorite song of ours if I wasn't in the mood. The closeness I felt to her never swayed, but with the immense wave of sadness gone, I could appreciate that not missing her every second of every day was healthy and normal.
A year and a half later, I still make my goodbye checklist when each break is ending. Although I now have closure every time I venture back to school. I don't need to say 'goodbye' to my sister. My grief ebbs and flows, and I know when I'm missing her extra that sometimes giving Don't Stop Believing a listen is all it takes.