Our "Jay-Z & Beyoncé"

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You never realize how precious life is until a loved one is taken away from you unexpectedly. Being adopted, I never connected with death; me and my sister would laugh hysterically at the thought of it because we didn't understand what it really meant. On July 31 of 2016 all of that changed. Our family experienced a great tragedy and a year and a half later we're still trying to recover from it. Some of us go on as though it never happened but those thoughts still find their way to creep up unexpectedly. Another bunch of us indulge so much in whatever we have going on we avoid that part of reality, yet it still finds it way to tap you on the shoulder every once in awhile, and the rest of us just aren't doing good at all. Death alone is hard to accept, but when a life is taken by choice you feel pain on top of pain. It not only took two people, but divided us from others we called "family". My heart goes out to both sides. I never knew how close, how much my intermediate family truly meant to me until I couldn't interact with them anymore. I'm sure I speak for all of us when I express how much I miss them. When you accept death , or anything that you disagree with it becomes real so we try our hardest not to accept it; we work , we indulge in worldly things , we fight , we consume ourselves with whatever we can to avoid accepting our reality. But I've learned that sometimes its better to face it now rather than later. We've held gatherings where we let go of butterflies by trees and balloons by graves. I held on to my balloon and my butterfly because I felt that if I let it go , I would be letting them go too and I wasn't ready; still not. With time you learn your never going to be ready to loose a loved one. It's never the right time to accept that you won't be able to hear their voices or laughter (or yell lol). Someone told me the biggest mistake the living make is when someone close to them die , they die with them ; but their living. With my hands cupped I slowly raise them to release my butterfly to be free so that I can be free with her. I untie the bow on my wrist I tied on the ribbon of my balloon to let it go so that I can float with him. It's time for us to realize that we are still alive and as long as our heart beats , our "Jay-Z and Beyoncé" lives on.