What Grief Left Behind

5 Things Loss Taught Me About Living

Grief has a strange way of dismantling you. Your mind, your body, your future, your past – it unravels every fiber of your being. It takes what you thought you knew about yourself and rearranges it. It changes things you’d never expect loss to touch: the way you spend your time. What you’re willing to tolerate. What makes you cry. What makes you laugh. What you hold onto and what you finally decide to let go.

I’ve spent grueling hours replaying everything grief took from me. But somewhere along the way, something shifted. Perspective came quietly, and the pieces of myself began coming back together – not as they were before, but rebuilt by what grief left behind.

1. You can be devastated and still think something is hilarious.

Why did it feel so criminal to laugh? In those darkest chapters, laughter was one of the things that reminded me I was still alive. What’s the saying – laughter is the best medicine? I needed bottles upon bottles.

When my brothers and I went to view my mother it was, and will remain, one of the most surreal experiences I have experienced. There she was, gone. Death – almost impossible to comprehend as an idea, yet stark and brutally real when seen with your own eyes. After the initial heart shattering sight, the sobs and trembling eventually subsided. There we stood awkwardly, like baby deer trying to find our footing.

No disrespect to the kind soul who caked on the bright coral lipstick for our mother, but it was atrocious. As we stood in silence my brother said, “Man - she would be so pissed about her lipstick.” We lost it. Were we all thinking it? Yes. Were we all as brazen as my brother to discuss a shade of lipstick considering the circumstances? No. But there we stood, now in a hysterical bout of laughter, the kind you can’t contain when you’re nerve-shot and unregulated, while the people outside of the room probably thought we were the most unhinged group of siblings.

But you know who would’ve been laughing the hardest? Our mom.

Laughter is not a crime in grief. It’s a connection back to the light when you desperately need one. And sometimes laughing in a room where you thought there could only be sorrow reminds you that the person you’re grieving is still present in the humor and the parts of yourself they helped create.

Laugh, my friends. It’s not only for you. It’s for them, too.

2. Grief has no respect for schedules – and life rarely makes room for grief.

Just as you’re allowed to laugh, you’re allowed to stop.

“Do. Fix. Control. Collapse.” If the first six months of my grief was a memoir, that would be the title. The raging neuroticism still makes me cringe. Was it a shiny new personality trait that arose out of nowhere? No. It was an old behavior and stress response that I thought I had mastered. LOL. Wrong. There I was, six months after my mom passed – shouting explicits while sobbing in the federal IRS building. A full-blown mental breakdown. Shout out to Pam and the clerical staff who showed me so much grace. You deserve a raise.

And just like that – realization, retreat, reprieve.

I drove home in a somber, but somehow comforting daze that day. I had broken myself – or maybe I had finally stopped trying so desperately to hold myself together. Either way, I surrendered. The next day I gave it all away. The to-do lists. The meaningless daily tasks. Plans. People- pleasing. The all encompassing need to feel in control over a situation I never had control of in this first place.

Looking back, I can see what I couldn’t see standing in that IRS building. I never stopped. My heart was breaking everyday, with every reminder – a song, a scent, a sunset. Yet I expected myself to carry on as if my whole world hadn’t been turned upside down six months earlier. I started to understand that making room for my grief wasn’t another task I would eventually get to after everything else was checked off and tucked neatly into its little box. Grief was going to take up space whether I gave it permission or not. I could make room for it willingly or risk getting escorted out of a federal building.

Stop. Just stop for a bit. Turns out, sometimes the most productive thing you can do in grief is absolutely nothing.

3. You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

Apparently, losing my mother did not cure me of people-pleasing. Give grief long enough, though, and it will make a huge dent in it.

If anything my grief initially made it worse. Re: my memoir. I wasn’t only trying to figure out how to survive my own loss; I was CONSTANTLY scanning the people around me. Are they ok? Did I say enough? Did I do enough? Did I say too much? Do they need anything? I promise you if a plane goes down – my chances of having an oxygen mask on are slim to pulse-ox zero.

Flash forward a year and a half later, that pestering little voice I’ve always had in my head is as quiet as it’s ever been. Grief did that for me. Grief taught me that compassion and responsibility are not the same thing. I can sit beside someone’s pain without climbing inside of it, just as I can love someone deeply without making their emotional well-being my responsibility. I can honor their grief without abandoning myself inside my own.

Their grief deserves space. Mine does, too. PUT. YOUR. OXYGEN. MASK. ON. FIRST.

4. You’re allowed to love your life again. Happiness does not mean you miss them less.

The most annoying side effect of my grief was the guilt that came with feeling good.

Apparently, after months of wanting to feel like yourself again, your brain registers a good day as suspicious. A fun-filled outing with my family, belly laughing with my girlfriends, that first sip of tea at sunrise – all of the things that brought me pure joy felt untrustworthy at first. Instead of just enjoying it there was a tiny voice saying: How can you be this happy when she’s still gone? As if missing my mom required a certain amount of suffering to prove how much I loved her. What?

I loved her deeply, deeper than words can provide. I wanted her here for all of it. Especially for my girls – watching them lose their Gigi was soul crushing in itself. I wanted to tell her about my day and laugh hysterically with her (she loved to laugh more than most.) Of course my joy felt incomplete – someone I not only loved deeply, but the woman who brought me into this world was missing.

But somewhere along the way, I realized sadness was never the measure of how much I loved my mom. I didn’t have to remain miserable to prove that losing her devastated me. There is no required amount of suffering one must complete before they’re able to enjoy life again. Grief had already taken enough – I wasn’t going to keep handing it my joy, too.

Happiness doesn’t mean I miss her less. It doesn’t mean I’ve moved on. It simply means that I’ve learned that grief and joy aren’t mutually exclusive. There are plenty of seats at the table. I can miss her terribly and still be wildly in love with my life.

And knowing my mother, she’d be pretty pissed if I did anything less.

5. You don’t lose everything.

I want to be careful with this one. I will never attach a silver lining to the loss of my mother. Silver linings don’t exist in grief that painstakingly deep. I would hand every invaluable lesson grief has taught me back, without hesitation, for one ordinary day with her.

But I also can’t say grief left me empty-handed.

Death took away my ability to hold her. To call her. To experience watching her and my children grow old together. It took away future birthdays, holidays, and ordinary moments I assumed I’d have a lot more of with her.

But it didn’t take everything.

I am more aware of those ordinary moments now while I’m still inside of them, especially with my own daughters, understanding one day this will be their grim reality. I hold people tighter, longer. I say things I used to assume could wait. I am less interested in saving life for later – how quickly later can disappear. I protect my peace at all costs. I give deep compassion to others but save responsibility for me and mine. I don’t feel the need to do more so I can feel less. I strive for balance so I can exist in peace.

And then there are still the pieces of her.

I notice them everywhere. Stories told in the laughter of those who loved her. In my daughters. In myself. Mannerisms, expressions, pieces of my personality I suddenly recognize as hers. I see her in signs she sends me. And she sends a lot of them.

Death took my mom from the physical world but grief made me notice her everywhere.

Death changed my relationship with my mom but it didn’t end it. I don’t get to call her anymore, but I still talk to her. I don’t get to make new memories with her, but she still shows up in the ones I’m making. I will always carry her into rooms she’ll never walk into and moments she’ll never physically see because as I’ve put the pieces back together, I’ve rebuilt myself with hers.

And that’s what grief left behind. Just dismantled pieces of love, finding new places to live.