There are days when I swear I’m forgetting someone.
Something good happens. One of my kids reached a milestone. One of my grandchildren does something adorable. I accomplish something I’m proud of. Or even when I’m overwhelmed and stressed out, and miss hearing someone’s calming voice to put my mind at ease.
And for just a split second, there’s this feeling in the back of my mind:
Who haven’t I told? Then it hits me. It’s not one person I’m forgetting. It’s all the people I can no longer call. That’s the thing about grief I’ve learned after more than two decades of living with it.
Grief doesn’t end. It changes. It gets quieter. It settles into the background. You learn to laugh again. You build a career. Raise children. Welcome grandchildren. Take pictures. Make plans. Get annoyed about ridiculous things.
Live. But the grief stays.
“Grief doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it’s just the quiet feeling that someone is missing from the room.”
Pop died from cancer in 2001. There isn’t just one thing I miss about him. I miss everything about my father.
His laugh. His wit. His advice. His love. Mostly, I miss how he somehow knew what to say when I needed to hear it.
And he’s also missed so much.
There are more than two decades of stories I’d like to tell him. Things my kids have done. People they’ve become. Great grandchildren he never met. Careers and successes and failures. Moments when I desperately needed his advice.
Sometimes I think, Pop, you wouldn’t believe everything that’s happened. Then again, maybe he already knows.
Singer Dean Lewis asks the question that I think anyone who has experienced tremendous loss understands:
“So how do I say goodbye” — Dean Lewis
I’m not sure we ever really do.
Because then there was my mom.
Dementia taught me that you can grieve someone long before they die.
We lost her piece by piece. Names disappeared. Places disappeared. Memories that should have been effortless became impossible to retrieve. Eventually, the disease changed her into someone we barely recognized.
Then COVID came.
Isolation took away so much of the time we had left. We couldn’t visit like we wanted. Couldn’t take her to lunch or dinner on weekends. Couldn’t hug her. Sometimes we couldn’t even get in touch with her simply to say, I love you.
By the time she died in 2021, I had been grieving my mother for years. But losing her physically was still another goodbye.
“Sometimes grief begins long before goodbye. Sometimes you mourn someone while they’re still sitting right in front of you.”
And then there is Timothy.
There are losses that follow some natural order we reluctantly understand.
Losing an 18-year-old isn’t one of them.
Timothy had spent the day four-wheeling with his friends—laughing, having fun, kicking down beaver dams and just being Timothy. On his way, he was riding back alone and took a turn too fast, hitting a tree headfirst without a helmet.
And just like that, an ordinary day became the day that divided our lives into before and after.
He was his father’s shadow. His sister’s protector. My in-house best friend. And he was absolutely thrilled about being a big brother again to Nicholas, who had been born just a month earlier.
Now every year Nicholas gets older is bittersweet. It’s another incredible birthday to celebrate—and another reminder of another year Timothy wasn’t here to see.
“I need your grace to remind me to find my own.” — Snow Patrol, “Chasing Cars”
Some days, I think that’s exactly what grief requires of us.
Grace.
Grace for the days when we’re doing great and grace for the days when a song comes on in the car and suddenly we’re crying at a stoplight. Grace for the holidays that don’t feel quite right. Grace for the family pictures where everyone is smiling but you can still see the people who aren’t standing there.
“Every family picture holds two stories: the people standing in it and the people we desperately wish still were.”
After Pop died, I was incredibly fortunate to have another wonderful father figure in my life.
My father-in-law, Tim.
He was an angel on Earth. He didn’t know a stranger. He was funny, kind, hardworking and fiercely devoted to his family. He had a heart of gold. My dad died shortly after I started dating my future husband, and Tim became someone I deeply admired and looked up to.
And then cancer took him, too.
Another goodbye.
Another empty chair.
Another person missing from the picture.
“I don’t wanna know what it’s like when you’re gone.” — Shawn Mendes
Unfortunately, some of us know exactly what it’s like.
It’s strange how grief hides.
A song. A smell. A restaurant. A photograph. A holiday. A meal you haven’t eaten in years.
Suddenly you’re standing in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday with pain behind your eyes because something transported you 20 years into the past.
That’s grief. There is no finish line.
“The tears aren’t always falling. Sometimes they’re simply waiting behind my eyes.”
At 49, I’ve finally realized grief is also about choices.
I can let everything I’ve lost consume everything I still have. Or I can keep searching for the light.
That doesn’t mean pretending I’m okay every day. Believe me, there are mornings when I’d happily stay under the covers. I’m continually stressed about work, my kids, photography and, occasionally, people who frankly have no business taking up that much space in my head.
But when I actually stop long enough to look around, I realize how incredibly blessed I am.
I have a family I love. A career. My photography. Three beautiful grandchildren. People who love me. And a wide-open road of possibilities still ahead.
Do I miss the people I’ve lost?
Every. Single. Day.
Do I believe any of them would want me to stop living because they’re no longer here?
Absolutely not.
Maybe that’s the greatest lesson grief has taught me.
We spend so much of our lives worrying about things that ultimately won’t matter. The money. The house. The stuff. The opinions of people who shouldn’t matter nearly as much as we allow them to.
We can’t take any of it with us.
What we leave are the memories.
The laughter. The traditions. The stories people tell about us long after we’re gone. The way we made someone feel. The love.
“Maybe healing isn’t learning how to stop missing them. Maybe it’s learning how to keep living while carrying them with us.”
I don’t think grief and healing are opposites anymore. Neither are grief and happiness.
I can laugh until my stomach hurts and still miss my father.
I can celebrate my children’s lives while wishing Timothy were here to see them.
I can adore my grandchildren while aching that my parents never got to know them.
I can have a beautiful life and still wish Tim were sitting at the table.
Joy doesn’t erase grief. And grief doesn’t erase joy. They’ve simply learned how to live together inside me.
So maybe the question isn’t – How do I say goodbye?
Maybe I don’t. Maybe I will carry them forward.
In the stories I tell. In the pictures I take. In my children and grandchildren. In the way I love people. And in the choices I make with whatever time I have left.
Because grief may not have a finish line. But neither does love.
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