Grief or nostalgia?

I am in my late 20s and have been to more than 15 funerals. 

They never get easier, but they do become more comforting. I remember my first ever funeral, my Nana's best friend Joan. A gorgeous woman who babysat me as a young child, picking me up from school with her own grandchildren. When finding out about her passing I begged my parents to let me go as I wanted to show my respects and say goodbye to her. I held very fond memories and thought that funerals were the place in which you shown love to said person or that's what I thought at 13. The heartbreak of seeing my nana, one of the strongest women I know break down in Joans house, the house that brought me so much comfort once upon a time, that gave me jam tarts and cartoons afterschool made me realise how painful death can be to those around. The church wasn’t too far away from the house and my nana wished to walk with her best friend one last time; I walked with her. I didn’t understand at the time why we was doing this, my dad has his car so we would be warm and could get our bearings before mass but Pearl said no, she wanted to walk the way and so I held her hand and we walked in silence in front of the carriage pulled by horses. Nobody else joined us. 

The hardest funeral I ever had to endure came way to early. I expected to be in my late 50s or even older the day I buried my own mother but no, I was 26.  

Every second from answering the phone to my dad to the minuet I got home from her funeral felt surreal, I was living on another plane floating through the days. Nothing was said on that phone call expect him begging me to come home, quickly and I felt my whole-body seize. I felt my heart break into a million pieces; my airways close and my mussels froze. I don’t know how I knew in that moment, but she had gone, my mother was no longer breathing my earth. As though her soul had escaped her body and found me in the city streets, on the floor begging my dad to tell me what had happened. Running through my childhood home to find my three uncles starting at me, no light left in their eyes but deep purple holes and a sadness filling the room that made the air too thick to stand in. Looking towards my dad just seeing raw pain before he held me, no words were needed as that was all the confirmation I needed to know she was in fact gone. I needed to get out, out of our home that held so many fond memories that were now flooding my mind but running outside I landed straight into my sister's arms. 
When I say that I felt as though I was moving in slow motion, it wasn’t until the point I heard my sisters scream that the clock started up again. I held her tightly, squeezing as we cried into each other, I couldn’t tell you how long we stood outside in the rain gripping onto each other for stability, feeling each other's hearts break but it felt like an eternity. But now I had things to do, it was though I grew up in the short time I was stood in the street with her with thoughts of “what do I do now?” “Who do I need to call?” “Where is she” rushing round my mind.  
     They took her body early morning and then the days passed. Lots of phone calls, planning, visits from strangers. People turn up in times of death who I wish shown up months prior, I just developed an anger unlike any other. Why is this person sat in my house with their condolences now? Where were you last year when she was in a coma due to her collapsing lungs? What good are you to her, to us now? 
Its been over a year since she passed and I think of her every day. Unfortunately, you must carry on with life, even if every day you wake up feeling as though part of your soul is missing without them around. What I would give to have a five-minute phone call with her, just to update her on my day.  

But grief doesn't just show up in our lives when somebody passes. The person you're grieving could still be around but no longer in your life; they could be a completely different person from the one you once loved although that can sometimes hurt more. You can grieve a life you once had or a future that is no longer possible, that was at arm's reach and suddenly was taken from you. I fear the future and I grieve the past, I want to go back to where I was, with the people I had, even with the knowledge that those people are bad for me. Three years ago, I had a friendship group in which we would see each other every day; laugh, drink and dance together but now those people are gone from my life. They're still at that dingy little bar with the faint smell of hotdogs and stale beer; the pool table covered in alcoholic stains and the graffiti of my presence on the walls but in the end, I was the one that left. I am the one that left and I am the one that grieves the memories that could have been. Where would I be if I had stayed in that group of people? Probably still too dependent on alcohol, working the odd hospitality job I hated, turning up to work smelling of the night before and picking fights with customers because I was mad at myself. Why would I grieve that life? Well because it was mine and I thought I was happy at the time. I was laughing, drinking and dancing. 
       There are boys from my past that I think about often too. What if I had stayed? What would my life look like now? If I had stayed and married that man, would we be happy? Maybe I had children in that timestream, we got another dog and spend out Friday nights with our small family cooking in the kitchen I painted badly on a whim one Sunday afternoon the mouldy grey colour that was meant to have been black. What if I stayed with the last boy after all the pain and suffering, he caused me? He did promise to change in the end. Maybe if I stayed, he would have changed and we moved away to the seaside like we planned, he stopped drinking and became insufferably into tea instead? I wonder what that life would have held for me. I miss and grieve both of those relationships, but I am also thankful they ended. 

The word grief has too meanings – an intense sorrow usually caused by death or trouble/annoyance. I grieve these people and those lives that could have been with an intense sorrow, but they also caused me trouble/annoyance. But then maybe the feeling I have is nostalgia? Meaning – a sentimental longing for a period in the past. However, the feelings I have about these times, people, lives are more intense sorrow and not a sentimental longing, so I believe I grieve for those times. I do not want it back, I do not want those boys back, that bar back or those friends back. I do want my mother back so does that mean I am nostalgic for the warmth she brought me?