You Don’t Get Over It. You Learn to Live With It.

Not long after Jay died, I was walking his dog up a big hill near home. On the way down, I was thinking about him. Talking to him, actually, which I’ve since learned is a natural and healthy thing to do. And then the enormity of it hit me. All at once. I fell to my knees and couldn’t move. Literally paralysed.

I was forced to breathe. Just the next breath, and then the one after that. Nothing else. Eventually I managed to get up, and I got myself home.

Grief hits you in waves. Sometimes it’s just about survival.

Then there’s the guilt. What could I have done that would have kept him here? Why him and not me? Can you imagine wishing you were the one who died?

I’d put money on it. The next time you see a parent on the news who’s lost a child, however composed they look, however clearly they’re fighting for a cause tied to that loss, I’d bet that thought is in there somewhere too.

If you met someone in that position, I’m pretty sure you’d treat them with kindness. You’d give them space to tell their story, or you’d just wish them well and mean it.

But take it from me, some people try too hard. They wish you could get over it. Get back to who you were. Back to normal. With the greatest respect to that sentiment, it’s never going to happen. That’s not how grief works.

You don’t get over it. You learn to live with it. So that when the big waves come, you have some way of standing up inside their force. You can finish the walk. You can even sit and tell your story, and how it’s affected you, the way I’m doing here. I know those waves won’t ever stop coming.

The breathing that got me back on my feet on that hill, one breath, and then the one after it, is close to the same instinct my rituals are built from now. Not because a journal stops the wave. It doesn’t. But having somewhere to put the next right thing is part of what lets me stand up inside it, and stay standing.

I know that when I see a parent on television talking about losing their child, I’ll feel that differently than most people watching. More than I would have before. Grief has changed what I feel and how much of it I feel, as part of my own survival. The same instincts that help me stand up inside those waves have made me more compassionate toward people who are suffering, and less patient with people acting out of greed or self-interest instead of care.

In some ways, grief has made me a better person, and I’m grateful for that.

But I would trade every lesson I’ve learned in it to speak to Jay again, even for one second.

If this hit close to home, Maggie’s were the ones who helped us. There’s support out there, wherever you find it.

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