They say that the first thing you experience after losing someone is denial. I always thought the same thing. When I was nine and my puppy Princess ran away, I couldn't believe it. When I was twelve and I lost my CD player, I was in utter dismay. And then, I figured it out. When you lose something that really matters, something that you never thought possible to lose, it isn't denial you experience. It's the polar opposite of denial. You experience…truth. A dose of realism, perhaps. When I was fourteen and my sister died, I knew it was true. Denial did not once cross my mind in those first moments. Death was a bone fide knife cutting through everything I had ever thought was true. Loss was penetrating every fiber of my being, reverberating throughout.

Some say that it's numbness that you feel. That you are so numb to the pain that you can't comprehend what's happening and THAT is why you experience denial. But the numb didn't come until later. The pain was not eased. The pain was in cohorts with death, the knife, and used everything it possibly could to get to me. Thoughts. Memories. Regret.

No, it wasn't denial that I felt. It wasn't unfathomable and I wasn't numb. I didn't question it when my step father replied to my questioning with, "Lauren, she's gone." I knew it before I had asked the question. I knew it before I realized that the hospital bed was gone or that the Hospice truck had evacuated our driveway. I think that, in my sleep, I felt it before I even woke up. I may have even thought it the day I came home from school and my mom sat me down to say, "Lauren, your sister has a brain tumor." I realized that my sister was gone and she wasn't coming back.