My Evolving Relationship with Grief

While I experienced grief throughout Sami’s brief illness in 2023, her passing in August left me feeling hollowed out. Devastated. Empty. I went through the motions of going back to work. Of settling her estate. Of trying to continue living. But as I look back at that stretch of time from my current vantage point, I realize that the details are fuzzy at best. I do not have any clear recollection of that first autumn and winter alone.

Today, 612 days after Sami died, I feel like my relationship with sadness has changed. There are still days when I’m profoundly and inconsolably sad (several Saturdays ago, for example), but increasingly, my grief also evokes happy memories of our lives together. Sometimes it’s a photograph of Sami, or the two of us together. Sometimes it’s the line from a song she enjoyed, or more frequently, from a song that reminds me of her. In some respects, sadness seems to be a friend that visits from time to time in a way that fills me up rather than hollows me out.

As I consider this evolution, I realize that my grief has always had elements of both despair and happiness. Early on that August morning, when Sami left us, I was blessed to be surrounded by our family. We sat on the deck of our home in Auburn in the middle of the night and shared happy memories about Sami. Someone looking in on us might have struggled to reconcile our laughter and smiles with the loss we’d just experienced - but in that moment I think all of us felt the need to focus on what we’d had rather than what we’d lost.

That said, the grief and loss were still raw for me at that point. I can also remember later that week, as I left Emma in Idaho for her to start her junior year in college and returned to an empty house, that I alternated between crying and wanting to cry. And screaming into the void.

Those moments of despair come less frequently today, but they still come. Earlier this month, on the Saturday after I returned from watching Emma compete in logger sports for the last time as a college student, I was intensely sad. I realized that Sami would never get to experience what I’d just enjoyed. I remembered that one of Sami’s wishes was for Emma to complete her undergraduate degree (which she will do next month), but that Sami wouldn’t be with us on that happy day. I struggled to get out of the house and start my day.

This week, though, the girls shared a new album by one of our favorite bands, the Turnpike Troubadours. The first song on the album, “On the Red River” concludes with the line:

“Death doesn’t leave with the best part of you.”

The lyric took my breath away - I nearly had to pull over on my drive to work on Monday morning. But as the day went on, I realized that I am increasingly able to see past the trauma of Sami’s illness and passing, and remember the life that we had together - the life that we were able to provide our daughters while they were growing up. That part of our lives together remains. By the end of the day, I was in an entirely different (and much happier) mood.

As I’ve written previously, grief is perhaps the most universal of emotions. But while all of us have experienced grief (or will experience it at some point), our path through grief is very individual. Part of my own evolving relationship with grief, I think, has been the result of some of the formal therapy (individual and in groups) I’ve done in the last 20 months. But much of this change has come from re-engaging with old friends, and making new friends. Much of it has come from talking about these things with friends who’ve also experienced grief. And much of it has resulted from conveying my experiences and feelings through this blog - and more importantly, from the response of those of you who’ve read my posts. Thank you.