Thinking about grief today
Thinking about grief today — specifically, the kind of grief that comes from the death of a loved one, the grief that can’t and shouldn’t be compared to any other loss. It’s the grief rooted in the relentless, lifelong realization that someone who once meant everything to you is now gone, permanently, with no bargain or negotiation that could ever bring them back. It’s the kind of loss that can’t be measured alongside anything else, because nothing else is as brutally absolute.
I’m talking about the emptiness that becomes as much a part of you as an arm or a leg when you lose a parent. The brutal finality of it, a persistent truth that no amount of praying, bargaining, or heartfelt pleading could ever change. Ironically, you never really understand it. You watch as they lower them into a hole in the ground, half wanting to stop the whole charade because you realize that them being in the ground lessens any chance of turning back, lessens the chance of this being some terrible dream. It makes it impossible for them to wake up, say it was all a joke, and walk back through the door with a sheepish grin on their face asking if you missed them. And no matter how desperately you might want to turn back time, there is no path that leads to them. No new memories, no chance for reconciliation if there were things left unsaid.
The unshakable awareness that you will never again hold them, never again feel their arms wrapped around you in comfort. Their voice — the one you used to know so well — will never again speak your name or yell it even. You can’t run to them when you’re broken or battered by life, can’t collapse into their embrace and breathe in the scent that was so uniquely theirs. And you know, no matter how desperately you might want to, you’ll never be able to pick up the phone and hear them on the other end.
That’s the grief I’m thinking about: the ache that comes from the perpetual confrontation of the finality, from the never ending torment of waking up every day just to to re-realize there’s no second chance or next time. This is the kind of sadness that doesn’t just visit — you live with it. It is present at every birthday, graduation, promotion, and celebration, even in the mundane meetings, and holiday traditions, a longing to reach out to someone who is not and will never again be there. A mother and her daughters chatting around a living room and laughing as they bring up cheerful memories they will never again share with the man from their stories. It is an ever-present ghost of what could have been that never had a chance to be.
I remember reading somewhere someone described the impact of time on grief. You never learn to be okay, and the size of the loss never really gets smaller. Your life just gets bigger around it. It is as heavy in year 12 as it was on Day 0. Sometimes you manage to set it aside for a while, moving through your day almost normally, only to be blindsided by the sound of a stranger’s phone ringing and out of the corner of your eye, you see that it’s a call from their dad. Something so simple that you will never again experience. Your phone will ring many times, but it will never be your dad calling.
It’s the grief of permanent absence, the grim understanding that you can’t argue with death or negotiate for just one more day. It weaves itself into your everyday life in ways you never expected — lurking in the back of your mind as you try to move forward. You learn to keep going, even as that persistent notification blinks, reminding you that they’re not just unavailable; they’re gone.
I’m thinking about grief today and how it never holds back, and never lets you forget. No matter how many years pass, there’s no finding peace, no neat wrapping up of it. It doesn’t get smaller, it’s always there, quietly reminding you of what you lost. Grief doesn’t make sense.
