Step 1: 1. Let go of things that remind you of the person

It is 1:00 am and I desperately need to talk to my best friend.

Unfortunately,

On November 11th, I was checking facebook and saw someone post a picture of them with my best friend and the caption said "RIP Becky." Intrigued and confused I clicked over to Becky's wall and it was FILLED with the repeated phrase "RIP Becky." I scrolled down to find a link that directed me to an article about how she was killed in an accident. Her friend drove her off of a cliff at 1:00 am. The article said that she was dead on the scene "due to obvious fatal trauma."

The way I found out was very impersonal, which made the situation hard to believe and easy to deny. I wonder what Becky said when she heard that I found out about her death through random acquaintances and old friends ending up on my "newsfeed." I know for a fact that we'll have a long discussion over how lame that was in Heaven.

Now, the whole world is trying to get over the loss of Becky. Ironically, the one person I want to talk about my incredibly painful feelings with is same person I'm grieving. It makes this process so much harder, which is why tonight at 1:00 am, I googled "how to deal with grief." (So lame, I know)

This is the first step I found on the internet...

1. Learn to let go of things that remind you of the person or situation.
Whenever someone is lost to us, or whenever we find ourselves in a situation of grief, we tend to hang on to things that remind us of what we have lost. This can be attributed to the human need for something to hang on to when all else is falling: it is the human need to hope for something when all the world seems hopeless.

If someone you love has died, you might want to keep a few mementoes of his or her stay on earth. However, you will need to let these things go little by little. By letting that photo, dress, or figurine go, you are also letting the person go, and letting the grief dissipate. Think: would the person have wanted you to waste your life pining away for him or her?

So this article suggesting my need to wear Becky's things everyday is a bad way to go. This article was written by a monkey and I am totally going to have to skip that step. I love having constant reminders of her around me at all times. It is NOT a waste of my life thinking about Becky!! She always made me happy and her memories continue to do so. Her old stuff makes me remember the fact she was here. Needing to talk to her and not being able to makes me realize that she is gone.

Step one of my google result was stupid. Step 1 is now: Identify what triggers your grief --that way, you might be able to have a plan the next time it wears you down and overwhelms you.