People I love keep dying. But there is joy.

I tell myself it started with Lauren on December 11, 2018, but the reality is: it started sooner than that. I suppose it was just her death that threw me against a wall and left me there to bleed.

It started in March 2017 when my cousin Chris died of a heart attack. I argued with my mom over who would tell my sister, because I knew how close she was to him and I couldn’t bear to break the news to her. I drove my sister to Covington, Louisiana, to meet the rest of my family for the funeral. I left with a speeding ticket for a souvenir.

Then my mom’s best friend’s husband died. Then my Sunday school teacher died. Then church members I knew died. Then my friend’s brother-in-law died in the 2018 California fires. Then my close friend’s dad died. And something was stewing in me. Something was trying to tell me, “Oh, darling, it’s about to get so much worse.”

And it did.

I lost Lauren. After she died, I started referring to periods in my life as “Before Lauren” and “After Lauren.” For example:

Before Lauren died, I did this.

After Lauren died, I did this.

People who are close to me understand this lingo. They know what I mean. It means that there was a Shayla before Lauren died in a car wreck, and then there’s a very different Shayla that emerged in late December 2018. Little did I know that the dam of grief had been burst open. That from now on, Grief and I would have a whole new relationship.

Grief would come knocking when I begged her to stay away. Grief would come when I just couldn’t bear another death anniversary. Grief would infiltrate and steal my day, leaving me in a heap in my bed, tissues everywhere. All to remind me: “There is more to come.”

And more came. Oh, God, so many more.

Days after Lauren, it was my best friend’s daughter. Stillborn.

It was Poppy a couple months later. My aunt’s father, but he was a Poppy to all of us.

My aunt Pat. As she lay dying, I held her hand as I wept and whispered words to her, then I kissed her forehead. (When I first wrote this, I omitted what I whispered to her. But transparency is a major theme in this article, so I will tell you what I said, as ashamed as I am: “I’m sorry I didn’t visit you more. I am so sorry. I love you.”)

My client who wrote about generosity. She was terminally ill, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

Someone I grew up with—he overdosed. After Lauren, I learned not to look in the casket. I didn’t look in his either.

More and more died. They just kept dying.

One day my nephew asked me, upon seeing me organize my pills for the week, “What is that pill for?” It was Lexapro. Justin is a boy who will accept only honesty. He knows when you’re lying or even smudging the truth. So I said, “It’s for depression.” He asked, “Why are you depressed?” And I said something to a 12-year-old boy that I hadn’t said to my parents. That I hadn’t said to my pastor. That I hadn’t said to my doctor. I said to him, “Because people keep dying.”

You see, Before Lauren, I was . . . different at funerals. I usually didn’t cry. I stayed calm. It felt like a task. I go. I sit. I listen. I hug the family. I leave. I pushed it all down. Way down, down, down.

But After Lauren, I was . . . different in another way. I completely fall apart now. When people I love die, I am every emotion. I am sad. I am tired. I am angry. I am hopeless. My own mother, her intuition at full peak, senses the After Lauren emotions when someone dies. She immediately is there for me when someone dies, keeping an eye on me to ensure I don’t . . . fall apart, I guess.

On January 14, 2021, a woman who changed my life passed away. Her name was Shari Bower, and she wrote a memoir called Before They Executed Him: A Wife’s Story of Death Row. It’s about her husband, Les Bower, who was accused of a crime he did not commit. And I think the best thing I could do in this article is to be transparent. So here it is.

I cried when I found out. Of course I did. My mom consoled me. Two hours later, I taught a class for my writers’ group. I went out to dinner. I laughed and enjoyed my evening. I said goodbye to my friends. And then I was alone with my grief, which is what I wanted. I wanted to let it take over me so I could, in a strange way, start the healing process. I needed to be alone so I could be vulnerable.

So on that Thursday night, alone in my house on my couch, I wept. I sobbed until I couldn’t catch my breath. I was angry that she was gone without my saying goodbye. I was sad that I couldn’t go to her house again and stay up late telling silly stories. I was upset that her daughters couldn’t be at the hospital to say goodbye.

But then a totally different emotion overtook me: happiness.

As the tears subsided, I realized that Shari Bower, for the first time in years, hugged her husband. She was in heaven, and her husband, who was legally murdered by the state of Texas, was there waiting for her with open arms. She saw him for first time since 2015. She saw him without handcuffs, without a prison jumpsuit. She saw her husband and was happier than I could ever comprehend.

A few days later, while on a walk, I remembered what my preacher once told me during grief counseling in 2019: “God loves us, and he loves Lauren, right? Then when you think of it, ask God to tell Lauren that you love her, that you miss her. I think he’d do that, don’t you?”

I did precisely that. I asked God to tell Lauren that I miss her, that I love her. I asked God to tell Shari that I miss her, that I love her.

Grief brings so many emotions, doesn’t it? But it brings joy too. It reminds me that the people I have loved so dearly are waiting for me. They are waiting to tell me, “Oh, I missed you too, Shayla, and I love you. I’m so glad you’re finally here.”

An expert editor, best-selling author, and book marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with writers every day. A lifelong lover of books, she has been in the publishing industry for ten years and specializes in self-publishing.

Her award-winning blog teaches new and established authors how to write, publish, and market their books.

She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, “The Rotting” (in Shivers in the Night), The Suicide Tree, #1 bestseller The 10 Commandments of Author Branding, and her book of poetry, All the Things I Should’ve Told You. In her not-so-free time, she acts as organizer for the Yukon Writers’ Society, studies all things true crime, and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her dogs, Chanel, Wednesday, and Baker.