Breathing Inside Loss
Today is a quiet day.
A day to find my internal rhythm again.
Living at a relentless pace has left me short of oxygen. I have been moving so quickly that I could almost pretend nothing is slipping away.
But things are always slipping away.
At this point in life, I’m no longer sure where present grief ends and anticipatory grief begins. My sister is still living, but parts of her have faded. My husband sits beside me, but the ease we once took for granted has narrowed. The losses do not arrive all at once. They arrive in increments. In weather shifts.
When we are young, loss feels like an event. A move. A death. A goodbye. Something dramatic enough to justify tears. But as we age, loss becomes ambient. It gathers quietly in the corners of ordinary days.
We are not taught to name this.
We are taught to be grateful. To keep going. To make the best of things. And we do. But gratitude and grief often live in the same room.
What I miss most are not the imagined romantic getaways of youth.
It is holding hands on an evening walk through our neighborhood.
Or sitting side by side at the end of a long day in the home we created together.
Arms brushing. Thighs touching. Hearts in quiet conversation without the need for explanation.
The simplicity of being known.
It was loss that first cracked me open. I was eight when we left the Maine woods that had always been my world. I did not yet understand what we were leaving behind until my gray cat, Fluffy, disappeared in the chaos of the move. Scared by the movers, she vanished. We had to drive away without her. No ceremony. No container for my grief. Just a child carrying something too large for her small body.
We got on with life in my family. We rarely spoke of things of the heart. And so I learned to carry grief quietly. To fill the space with books, pets, friends, love — always love.
Grief, I am beginning to understand, is not only something that happens to us. It shapes us. It deepens us. It makes us more tender in some places and more guarded in others. It can make us compassionate. It can make us angry.
It is not a flaw in the human design.
It is the cost of loving in a world where nothing stays the same.
Today, I am trying not to outrun that truth. I am trying to let the climate be what it is. Not to dramatize it. Not to deny it. Simply to breathe inside it.
Beautifully said. All those grief's we weren't able to fully grieve and those we carry of our ancestors too. And now we are witnessing this on such a large scale in the collective with all that is unfolding. But grief, if allowed to be seen and expressed is what allows us to heal and to remember, like you said, to learn how to balance it with the love and gratitude of life too.
My Mother in Law died yesterday and I was searching for things to read about loss. Of all the ones I read this was the only one that gave my soul what it needed.