Dealing with Grief

Meet my Aunt Mary De

I couldn’t do this post without doing a small tribute to my late Aunt – however, I still feel her presence guiding me and encouraging me every single day. I know she’s living her best life somewhere.. 🙂

Hi everyone – first of all thank you so so much for being here to honor the amazing Maryde. She would not want to go out in any other way – than with a beautiful party to celebrate her amazing life. Because we all know she LOVED a good party.

For those of you who don’t know, Maryde was my aunt, and I speak for all of my cousins when I say she was our favorite lady. She treated each of us like her own children and her phone proves it – it’s filled with photos of each of us throughout the years that she saved from Facebook or made us text to her so she could always stay in touch and show her friends what we were up to. She did this for the WHOLE family, really. She was obsessed with all of her family, and it’s safe to say that we’re all equally obsessed.

I speak for the whole family when I say that our hearts hurt heart hurt so much to know that we will never physically get to see Maryde again, but we’re also so lucky to have her as our angel alongside grandma, grandpa and the love of her life, Uncle Bob.

As I’m sure you could see, she was an absolute angel. She was spunky, resilient, and one of my favorite women on the planet. There isn’t a day that has gone by that I don’t think about her or miss her, but I’m honoring her by living the life that I know SHE would want for me to pursue.

Giving Grief It’s Time

Before we dive into the coping mechanisms that I used for dealing with my loss, I wanted to go through the steps a bit that I personally went through and how I dealt with each one. Of course everyone is different and deals with hardships differently, but hopefully my journey can help you a bit:

1. Despair:
   • Not to be dramatic, but the second I got that FaceTime from my parents telling me we had lost my aunt, I was a wreck. I personally started reading old text messages between my aunt and I, looking through photos, etc. I was screaming/crying a majority of the evening. I have never felt that sort of pain in my life, but I kept looking at things to “trigger” this in a weird way because I wanted to let it out. Sometimes that can be therapeutic in and of itself. I
   • We decided to do the Celebration of Life about 2 weeks after her passing, so this continued until I left LA for Florida. It wasn’t all day every day, but there wasn’t one day I didn’t mourn, feel depressed or upset.
2. Anger: 
   • Before going to Florida, I had a brief stint of anger. It didn’t seem fair that the rest of the world just continued business as usual while our family had lost someone so special. Life as we knew it had changed, but everything else just kept moving when I wanted it to just stop.
3. Shock/Denial:
   • Once I arrived in Florida, it was surreal. Florida has been where all of my memories with my Aunt had been for the better part of the last 10 years. That being said, when I got there, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she was gone. It seemed like she was out of town or just hanging out at home, which was under 5 minutes from my parent’s house. My whole family was in town – like everyone, even all of our extended family, so in a way, it was easy to ignore the fact that she wasn’t coming back or arriving late to the party.
   • My brothers, my sister in law, Nick and I took on the task of planning the Celebration of Life so that it gave my parents one last thing to worry about. My parents and Mary De were absolutely inseparable – they were the three musketeers (Mary De was widowed for about 6 years.) With my being an Event Planner, I went into full blown planner mode. I was able to focus on the event vs. my grief. I also wanted to be strong for my parents.
4. Sadness & Emptiness:  
   • Let me tell you, the second that my speech at the Celebration of Life was over, I bawled my eyes out and the sadness was back all over again. It had really set in that she was gone and seeing everyone else mourn made it all the more real.
   • The day after the Celebration of Life, Nick and I flew back to LA. This was so difficult because our family lives all over the country.  Having to say (temporary) goodbye to them on top of letting my sadness come in and the reality set in of Mary De being gone was rough. The sweet lady next to us on the plane asked Nick if I was OK – anyone else just completely LOSE it on planes when they’re going through something?! LOL..anyways, I digress.
5. Acceptance: 
   • Lastly, when we got back to LA, I was able to bring momentos of Mary De back home with us such as the ‘My Favorite Aunt’ mug I got her ages ago, the gold bracelet she said was for me, and the flowers I made for everyone to take home and plant.
   • As I write this about 3 months following her passing, I won’t say it was easy, but I will say that each day got easier. If I think about it too much, I get upset, but my family and I speak about her all of the time. We never want to stop – we loved her so much and I won’t ever forget the impact she had on my life. A little light humor – I recently told my family “Mary De tapped out just in time to miss all of this shit!” referring to COVID-19,- insert gritting smiley here…haha!

Dealing with Grief & Coping

• Release all Judgement: When dealing with grief, there is this overlying feeling of how you “should” feel and “should” react during each of the different stages. For example, if you don’t cry at first (or never for that matter), don’t judge yourself for that. If something completely out of the box makes you feel better, do it. There is no right or wrong when it comes to coping.
• Take Up Meditation: I know, I know, for some of you this may sound a bit too ‘woo woo’, but this helped me so much. I used my Ten Percent Happier app and they have a special section for dealing with grief. It was like little therapy sessions every morning and whenever I felt overwhelmed with my emotions just moving through the day.
• Journaling/Writing: I felt that when I wrote down my words of affirmation to my aunt to paper it gave me a sense of release. It was tough as hell, but the first post I shared to Instagram and Facebook were therapeutic, as well as writing my speech for the Celebration of Life. It was a tribute to her, and it felt great to honor her in a public way.
• Triggering Myself to Cry: This may sound psycho, but hear me out, lol. When I would be driving in the first weeks following my aunt’s passing, I would put on some of her favorite songs and songs that were about loss. For some reason, it helped me immensely to just be able to cry it out and release all of the emotions I was holding onto.
• Make Plans: As hard as it may be, it was really great for me in those first few weeks to make (few) plans – nothing overwhelming – with friends that I felt super close with. Having that love and support was great. It would even be something as simple as going to a workout with them. Just having someone in your presence that cares about you is an automatic mood boost.
• Getting in Movement: Each morning, I would go for a non-negotiable walk and listen to uplifting podcasts or call someone in our family to feel connected. Then of course my typical workouts – working out gives you endorphins & endorphins make you happy…name that movie 😉

Outside of the above, the obvious ones were being surrounded by family and honoring and talking about Mary De often. If you ever feel like your emotions are too much to handle, please contact a licensed professional immediately and see this website for support. This post is in no way medial advice, but rather my experiences and simply sharing what has been helpful to me.

Sending you so much love! xxoo

Alysia (Purely) Pope

PS, If you need a bit of a pick-me-up following this read, checkout this post to see some of my top Podcast Picks!