Unexpectedly losing two loved ones within two months was a crash course in Grief. It collided with a belief I didn’t know I carried: that grief was rare.
I didn’t realize then, but Grief had been patiently waiting for an opening.
Anyway, there I was, surrounded and consumed. Not just by recent loss, but a lifetime of unprocessed moments. All the times I had stood Grief up.
We could call it miscommunication. Crossed wires. Or maybe I simply didn’t know I was supposed to meet it.
It really doesn’t matter.
What became clear was this: introductions were happening now.
Old Grief. New Grief. Grief appearing in places I didn’t expect.
It reminded me of confirmation bias. I remember being pregnant and suddenly noticing childrens parks everywhere, wondering when the city had built them all.
They had always been there. My mind had just filtered them out.
Not relevant. Not recognizable. Not something I had the tools to see.
Grief was the same.
It hadn’t been absent.
Just unseen & unmet. Yet.
~
In my twenties, I worked in a busy broker’s office alongside a row of other assistants. One day, I passed a coworker’s cubicle and saw her shoving random papers into an already stuffed bottom drawer.
“What’s that?”
I was genuinely curious. My own cubicle was meticulously organized. Order felt like safety.
“That’s where I put things I don’t wanna do.”
She said it casually. Like it was obvious. Like it was allowed. Like she had permission.
I remember standing there quietly stunned. You can just…decide not to deal with something? No stress about it? No panic?
What happens to it?
I think about that drawer almost weekly, but lately a lot more.
Because that’s what I’d been doing with Grief. Closing the drawer before I ever had to look inside. Telling myself I’d get to it later, or that maybe it didn’t matter enough to open at all.
But it was still there.
Waiting.
Grief isn’t just about losing someone, but everything I never made space to feel.
HELLO, GRIEF
I vividly remember our first meeting.
