Dear C,
It's nice hearing from you. I agree that it has been a while since our last Gmail encounter. My apologize for not immediately reply to your message. It was because at first, I don't know what to say. I have been in your position many times before to know that there won't be any words good enough to comfort you. When I lost my mother, my grandmother, my ex boyfriend, and people tried to console me with their 'wise words', I always ended feeling bitter instead of better.
I was like,'have you been in my position before? Can you relate with what I actually feel? If not, then don't talk like there is rainbow waiting after darkness. You don't even know how it feels.'
Time heals, they say, and you don't believe what they said because as time goes by you miss him more. I'm sorry to be the one who say this to you, it would and could become worst than that. Perhaps at some point you will get use to be without his presence (so time heals after all, if you wait long enough), but there will be moments when your thought wanders and you will remember the good memories of him. And it would kill you -not literally- to let yourself swim in those sentimental feelings.
But death and loss are the natural parts of life itself. To think about it, loss is only ugly to us, the ones that the death has left and won't be able to meet them -our loved ones- anymore. As a thirty something woman (who is fortunate enough looking like twenty :D), I have learned that life itself is so very fragile. Something or someone important to us could be taken away in a matter of flashing seconds. Mistakes can be done and scar will left its eternal mark. Forever there beneath surface to remind us that between breathing and happiness, bad things are waiting in every corner. We are awake every morning to every possibility of misfortunes: betrayal, pain, rejection, hurtful, lies, pretenders, judgments, sickness. The death however, are beyond these earthy sufferings.
As religion convinces us that there is a better afterlife awaiting after our time in this world. We are to believe the ones that have left us were now in a better place.
That's why even though we are different in faith, I am grateful that you are a believer with religion too, C. Because that is the most important part from faith: it gives hope. Hope for a better place after death and that the death will no longer can feel pain and sickness like the rest of us staying in this world sooner or later will.
But I can't tell you what to and what not to feel, C. Feelings are raw. It is something we cannot control upon ourselves. Perhaps it is better to let yourself feel what you feel until you reach the point of ready to let go.
Anytime your thought goes to Kaplan, and you miss him badly, terribly, think of this: at least you have been fortunate enough to have him in your life. To have him armed you with memory and experience you could look back fondly. That instead of remembering him with bitterness, you are blessed to memories him with all the love and good care he once done. That he left you because of his dialysis instead of an ugly break up.
I could not express how sorry I am that you've lost your fiance' within weeks before you were getting married. I was planning to see you in Istanbul on February, but something come up. Somewhere in the near future, I will surely come to visit. Take care.
