Grief, Memory, and the Love That Remains

Grief is a strange and intimate companion—one that quietly enters your life, settles in, and changes everything you thought you understood about yourself. I have met grief before. I felt it when my father passed away, when I believed I had already reached the deepest depths of loss. I assumed that surviving his death meant I would know how to navigate grief again with resilience and clarity. But this—losing my baby sister—has rewritten everything. This new wave of sorrow arrived uninvited, ignoring all the “rules” I thought I understood. It has left me numb, blank, unable to cry, as if my heart is frozen beneath the weight of what happened.

People often talk about the “stages of grief,” as though they unfold in neat, predictable steps—stage one, then stage two, and so forth. But grief is far messier than that. The pain comes in sharp bursts; the numbness settles in without warning; the shock returns when I least expect it. It leaves me disoriented, hollow, drifting. Losing my sister has forced me to understand grief in its rawest form: not as a sequence, but as a series of waves. And beneath each wave is love—grief is the painful, unspoken tribute we offer to those we cherish beyond words.

The Day Everything Changed

On November 6th, my life changed forever. My beautiful sister—vibrant, kind, stylish, and endlessly creative—was taken from us far too soon. In early July, we learned that Abby’s liver had failed. It was a sudden and unexpected diagnosis, one we struggled to comprehend because the liver is a dynamic organ that is expected to repair itself. With this news, we entered the world of complex medical procedures. There was no discussion of death; the team of doctors worked tirelessly to keep Abby stable so she could receive a liver transplant.

Her case was presented to the Toronto Liver Transplant Program three times, but each time the committee deemed her ineligible due to her history of substance use disorder and her inability to complete the Rapid Access Addiction Medicine (RAAM) program. The heartbreaking truth was that Abby was too ill to participate. The consequences of her liver failure—extreme fatigue, weakness, hepatic encephalopathy, confusion, disorientation, and pain—made attending the outpatient program impossible.

On October 29th, during what should have been a routine blood transfusion, the medical team became alarmed by her blood work. She was rushed to the Emergency Department at the Civic Hospital, where she was hospitalized for a chest infection and a possible intestinal bleed. Despite everything, she fought with astounding courage and determination.

By November 3rd, the medical team made yet another case to the transplant program. Again, the response was disappointing. Still, the doctors refused to give up; they even reached out to the Quebec Transplant Program to see if an exception could be made. The outcome was the same. She needed to be an outpatient. She needed to complete the RAAM program. Neither was possible.

With this devastating news, we were told she might have only days or weeks left, and that the transplant would never happen. Yet Abby gave us two beautiful days—days where she engaged, smiled, joked, and felt like herself again. For a moment, we believed the doctors were wrong.

But on November 6th, in the early hours of the morning, she suffered a catastrophic brain aneurysm and was pronounced brain dead within hours. It was sudden, shocking, and shattering. We had not prepared for this kind of end. When the medical team told us she had no chance of survival, we made the decision that no family should ever have to make.

For the next few hours, we surrounded her in a circle of love. We talked to her, prayed for her, cried for her, and hoped she could still hear us. We wanted her to know she had done enough—that she had fought bravely and beautifully for years. Most importantly, we wanted her to feel our love, to know there was no shame in her journey, and to be proud of the woman she had become.

Our brave warrior took her last breath around 4:50 p.m. The moment was unbearably quiet. As our tears fell, shock wrapped itself around us like fog. One by one, everyone left the room until only my mother and I remained, suspended in our grief. Time felt stretched and warped. Eventually, we too left the hospital, carrying the weight of our loss into the fading light.

Moving Through the Motions We Never Wanted

In the days that followed, denial became our shield. Our minds wouldn’t allow the full impact of losing Abby to land. Instead, we threw ourselves into calling people, settling her affairs, and planning her funeral. We confronted every decision with robotic precision. It was easier to operate on autopilot than to sit with the truth. We treated the arrangements like a mission to complete, because accepting her absence felt impossible.

The funeral was scheduled for November 12th. It began with a private visitation, followed by open visitation hours, a celebration of life, and her cremation ceremony. The funeral home offered my sister Jany and me a gift we will never forget: the chance to dress Abby and do her makeup for her final send-off. We didn’t need to discuss it—we agreed instantly. The certainty came from a casual but deeply intimate conversation Abby and I had once had. Half-jokingly, half-seriously, she had said that if she ever passed away, she would want us to do her makeup. If you knew Abby, you knew her eyes—her signature. Expressive. Luminous. Alive. She always highlighted them perfectly. Honouring that was sacred. It wasn’t vanity; it was love. It was a promise. It was ensuring that her essence remained visible one last time.

We arrived at the funeral home on November 11th around 3:30 p.m. The funeral director greeted us and gently guided us to the room where Abby was resting. Seeing her for the first time after her passing took our breath away. She looked serene, elegant, almost radiant. And there it was—a tiny, unmistakable expression that was pure Abby. The look she wore right before delivering a sarcastic comment, a sharp one-liner, or a joke only her siblings would fully understand. Subtle. Real. Unmistakable. It stopped me in my tracks.

It felt like she was speaking through it:

“I’m still me.”
“I’m still here somehow.”
“And yes, I see the irony in all this.”

But there was something else too—a quiet fierceness. That smirk felt like her final protest, her polite but unmistakable middle finger to a system that failed her. Even in death, her wit, her fire, her refusal to be erased shone through.

For a brief moment, it was just the three of us—the Vara sisters—in our own sacred space. As we dressed her in her traditional soft blue Langa, added delicate accessories, and painted her lips with her favourite deep red lipstick, our sadness slowly softened. We teased one another, shared inside jokes, and even took silly photos that would make us laugh later. I am grateful for that time more than words can express. The next day, we had to share her with the world.

On November 12th, we said our final goodbyes. Hundreds came to honour her. While the expected response would have been to sit beside our mother and mourn, my sister Jany and I instinctively shifted into autopilot. We became hosts. We greeted people, managed the schedule, and kept things moving. It wasn’t avoidance—it was what our mother needed from us. Supported by my spouse, my brother-in-law, my late sister’s partner, and her best friend, we formed what we called the A Team—“Team Abby.”

Three Weeks Later: The Waves Still Hit

It’s been three weeks since Abby has been gone, and time has not softened the edges of the loss. If anything, it has sharpened them.

Denial is still here, stubborn and steady. It sits beside me in the quiet moments, whispering that this can’t be real, that she will walk through the door, call my name, send a message, laugh her mischievous laugh. My mind knows the truth, but my heart refuses to believe it.

Anger, once just a flicker, now feels like a raging fire. It rises without warning—stemming from the unfairness of it all, from the system that failed her, and from a world that continued moving when hers came to a halt. This anger is born from love, from the unbearable realization that someone so bright should still be here.

Bargaining has joined the mix. I replay every moment, every decision, and every conversation, searching for something I could have done differently. I imagine alternate realities where she survives, versions of the story in which I somehow manage to pull her back from the edge.

Now, depression has set in—heavy, uninvited, and bone-deep. It brings a quiet ache that fills the spaces where her presence once was. It’s the weight of knowing that no amount of wishing can change what has happened. It’s the loneliness of living in a world forever missing her light.

Acceptance is nowhere in sight—not even a faint silhouette on the horizon. And perhaps that’s okay. Maybe acceptance isn’t a destination, but rather a slow and painful journey toward learning to breathe again.

All I know is this: three weeks later, my grief is still raw, still real, and still unbearably vast. But beneath it all lies love. Perhaps that love—the love she gave and the love we shared—is what will eventually guide me through this darkness, one breath at a time.

If you wish to read about Abby click here.