Paris Is for Grievers, Too

Vogue

3 hours ago

It may sound cliché, but I have always been drawn to Paris. Just like Carrie Bradshaw, Emily Cooper, and Jo Stockton all are—I knew being there would change me. So when I got an acceptance email from a study abroad program for a spring semester, I knew I was going. What I didn't know was that my entire life was about to change.
The email arrived in my inbox a week before my 22-year-old big sister, Ivy, died by suicide. She was a strikingly beautiful, shockingly brave, effortlessly cool, truly brilliant young woman. Ivy was everything I wanted to be and everything I never authentically could be. Her confidence and intelligence were truly spellbinding; people either loved her or hated her (and one of her greatest superpowers was that she didn't care which). In the wake of losing her, I could not sleep, eat, speak, or at times even move. I had not only lost the most important person in my life, but somehow, I had also lost myself. Suddenly, I was no longer a little sister; therefore, it felt like I was no longer a person. I was just a body, a barely beating heart, paralyzed by grief.
About a month after Ivy's death, a follow-up email from the study abroad advisor popped into my inbox. I could barely pull back the covers in the morning, so how could I possibly move to Paris? Everyone, from my family to my therapist and the psychologists whose articles I read online, repeated the golden rule of grief: Don't make any big changes in the first year of a sudden loss. Be stable. Take it day by day. Don't put yourself in challenging situations—you might not make it if you do. I deleted the email notification from my home screen and sank back into my state of half-sleep.
Eventually, I found myself able to get out of bed, motivated to find somewhere to cry besides my bedroom, which did not have a real door. I wandered through DC's Rose Park, up the hill, past the playground, to the Female Union Band Society Cemeteries, to a silent, sad, leafy area that I loved because I could be alone. The air was so crisp and unfriendly that it felt like it was back home in Iowa, where we grew up. Through blurry eyes and a haze that only life-altering grief can bring upon someone, I made a decision: I was going to Paris. My life would never be the same, so I might as well make it as different as possible.