There is no casserole for this one. No card, no anniversary, no afternoon where people gather and say kind things about what you used to be able to do.
But it is grief. Grief for a version of yourself who gardened all Saturday, or lifted grandchildren without thinking, or made plans three weeks out and simply kept them.
People rarely give themselves room for it, because it seems ungrateful. You are still here. Others have it worse. So the sadness gets folded up small and stored somewhere in the body, which is not a place sadness stores well.
You are allowed to miss who you were without giving up on who you are becoming.
In my experience, this grief does not go away by being reasoned with. It goes quiet by being acknowledged. Named once, out loud or on paper: I lost something real, and I never got to say so.
I have watched shoulders drop an inch when someone finally says it. Not because anything changed in the tissue. Because a sentence that had been held for years was finally allowed to leave.
If some of that lives in you tonight, you are not being dramatic and you are not behind. You are grieving something that deserved to be grieved, and doing it without any of the usual support people receive.
That takes a strength most people will never have to find.
It was a real loss. I’m sorry no one said so. — Tammie
