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Grief doesn’t always live on the outside. Sometimes it survives under the skin, just below the surface. My walk with grief started in 2017 when my husband died. That journey did not have a kind or gentle start but a violent one where I said goodbye to him in the morning and then begged him for 3 days to wake up but he never spoke to me again. I processed that grief and I will carry it for the rest of my life as the honor that it is. The honor of having loved him and been loved by him.

And then grief revisited with a cruel vengeance in 2025. The year took 3 friends, my brother, and our dog, all by the end of March. And then my cat in September and a week later, my mom. Three months later, my youngest son’s cat and a week after that, my dad. To say this current grief is specifically and spectacularly layered would taste like a disrespectful understatement.

And then, life just seems to go on, as though nothing happened. The rude indignance of that is palpable. We return to work and laundry and dinner dishes. Grief is a touchy topic to talk about, ask about, even think about and so, sometimes, we don’t because we are buried in it ourselves and struggling to breathe as no room seems to hold any oxygen for us in the midst of our great loss.

It is a very different thing to lose parents. Parents are the primary witnesses to our lives. They know all there is to know about us from the early years, the ones of which we have no recollection. They hold memories and moments no one else shares. To not be able to pick up the phone and call the holders of those stories is blatant heartache.

Dad’s birthday has come and gone. That day was very difficult as was Easter before it. There will be many difficult days ahead. After my husband died, I lived for the that split second after waking but before remembering he was gone. I am having those mornings again. I don’t love them. They are heavy with grief and weighted with a literal gravity that makes it hard to get out of bed many days.

I am sad all the time. I battle daily under a profound and invisible wall of struggle. I go to work, I function, I laugh and I cry. My job is listening to grieving people, it is sacred work and everybody’s story is different and difficult in its own way. All grief is heavy and I help others carry theirs. They are sad every day too but, like me, most of them are working and living and caring as much as they can about things that used to matter more.

I can’t complain that my parents died in any literal sense. They were 89 and 93 respectively, they lived a long time and built a beautiful life and love story. But of course, I am complaining. I complain to myself that I can’t call and hear their voices, that they will never sing happy birthday to me again, nor I to them. I can’t hug them or make them laugh. There will be no more reminiscing, no story-telling. And I am always sad.        

Who will take their place? No one. How does a family go on with no one at the helm? Do we all just flail until we fall into our appropriate roles and places? I don’t think it works that way. No, now is the time we find our way and if we cannot, then we simply make our way, such as that is and whatever it looks like. Will we survive? Definitely we will. We are strong. But we will never ever look or be the same, and that is the profoundly sad yet appropriate thing.

And I am sad all the time.