Better Alive? Or Dead?

I wasn't sure of the title for this (another) personal post, but it does have to do with loved ones being alive or passed. I don't relate to death how most others I know do. I'm not going to go into my specific history of losses, but I will say how they affected me. When someone has passed, there's no road but acceptance. However you get there, it's all up to you. But there's no other alternative, except maybe making you own life hell through resistance of a truth that's not going to change.

Everyone has their own way of mourning. We need to go through that; to process the change, the loss. I've learned that not being able to mourn with others, with family or friends, makes processing it all a hell of a lot harder. Even more difficult than that, however, is when I lose someone who is still there, still alive. To be cut off by choice from someone very close to me is the hardest thing to deal with. Because there is no sense of finality, no sense of true closure, if they are still on the perimeter of my life. There but not there. There but no longer with me.

That is more painful than a loss from death. Death is inevitable. Death is a part of life. Separation, but not separation, there but removed. That is the hardest condition for me to ever have in my life.