Grief has a memory…
Sometimes I will feel deeply sad and not immediately understand why. Nothing obvious has happened. The day seems normal enough. I go about my routines, answer emails, talk to clients, fold laundry, drink coffee. And then eventually it dawns on me that my body remembers something my conscious mind was not actively tracking.
Today was the day, several years ago, that we learned my grandson might have a life-threatening heart condition.
Now, of course, I know the truth my nervous system already carries. The condition would eventually take his life, despite every hope, prayer, bargain, and desperate plea we offered to the universe.
I think this is something people do not always understand about grief. It is not just emotional memory. It is physiological memory. The body keeps anniversaries even when the mind is distracted. Our nervous systems quietly catalog terror, loss, helplessness, hospital rooms, phone calls, dates, seasons, smells, sounds. Then one day you wake up heavy-hearted and only later realize there is a reason.
For a long time, I tried very hard not to think about Isaac too much because the pain felt bottomless. In many ways, it still does. Tears still spring to my eyes when I picture his little face. I still have questions. I still feel anger sometimes. I still feel despair if I let myself stay in that space too long.
As a therapist, I know avoidance is not really healing. But I also know the psyche protects itself. Sometimes we approach grief in pieces because that is all the nervous system can tolerate. There are losses so profound that we do not “move on” from them. We learn to carry them while continuing to love the people still here.
And today, strangely enough, that is where my mind keeps landing. On my other grandchildren. They are loud and funny and exhausting and beautiful. They pull me into the present. They remind me that love did not end with loss. In some ways, losing Isaac deepened my awareness of how fragile and sacred all of this really is. I do not take ordinary moments for granted the way I once did.
Grief changes people. Sometimes painfully. Sometimes permanently. But occasionally it also softens us. It strips away the illusion that we have endless time and reminds us to hold tightly to the people we love while we can.
Today is a sad day. I suspect it always will be. But it is also a day that reminds me where my whole heart still lives.
