When Grief Doesn’t End After Goodbye

I thought the grief would end, or at least fade quickly, when my mom’s suffering did. She had two forms of dementia (Alzheimer's and vascular), slowly fading in front of me for nearly a decade. I cried in the hospital, in the car, in the grocery store, grieving her long before her last breath. I thought that meant I was “done.” I was wrong.  In some ways it had just begun.

Today marks the two-year anniversary of her death (I can say that word now) and the ache is still here. There are days when I catch myself reaching for the phone to tell her something small—what the weather’s like, a silly story she would laugh at. And there are many nights when she threads her way into my last thoughts.

I still visit her grave, just like I did the first anxious week after she was gone, unsure of what to say, overwhelmed by what couldn’t be said. Even now, I bring flowers, brush the leaves away, and talk to her. There’s comfort in speaking aloud as if she listens, even though I don’t know if she hears me. Maybe she does, somehow.

But the sadness of what I lost remains. A part of me is still mad at the world for taking her too soon…long before she actually left.  Little things remind me: stories, jokes, places that we shared. Sometimes it is the absence of her - of no one talking about her or asking me how I’m doing - that is harder.  Some days are easier, some sink like stones. 

Does grief fade? Will I ever stop missing her?  Maybe the truth is: grief becomes less sharp, but the missing never really stops. Visiting her, talking to her, remembering her—it’s my way of keeping her close.

People like to say grief has stages, as if it’s a project with a deadline. But missing someone you loved doesn’t work on a timeline. We carry them forward, in muscle memory, in stories we can’t stop telling, or through the pottery on the table that they made with love.

Dean Lewis wrote a beautiful song “How Do I Say Goodbye”.  It is about his dad and the hardship of losing a parent.  It comforts me on “days of stone”, reminding me that I’m not alone.  

Maybe the question isn’t when does it stop? Maybe it never completely does. Maybe the goal isn’t to stop thinking of my mom every day, but to notice how those thoughts shift—from jagged glass to something softer.

Grief doesn’t end. It changes shape - and can be a warm hug.

In solidarity,

Kate