The house is quiet in a way I don’t quite know what to do with. My chest feels heavy. Missy, my Siamese with those bright, curious blue eyes, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge after seventeen years by my side. She wasn’t just a pet. She was company, comic relief, and a calm old soul wrapped in soft cream fur.
I’ve heard it said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” People say Queen Elizabeth II said it. Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is the words are true.
When I first heard it, I thought, that sounds harsh. Like love is some cruel deal, happiness traded for pain. But it’s not that. It’s just the truth no one wants to face.
Because when we love, we don’t think about the end. We laugh, we sit at the table together, we hold our kids close. We don’t stop and say, one day this will be gone. We can’t. We just live. And then, when loss comes, that’s when we realize. This is the cost.
Just so we’re clear—the story below is fictional. All the characters and events in the story are purely imaginary. But the themes—those came from something personal. I’d just finished reading the first draft of my sister’s novel, and it floored me. Beautiful, heartbreaking. She wrote about the quiet weight of intergenerational trauma, about how families carry wounds forward, and about what it takes to heal.
This piece is my way of wrestling with those same ideas. I’ve long wondered how the past holds on to us and how a little compassion can sometimes ease its grip. For me, it isn’t really about pointing fingers. It’s about noticing the patterns and slowly finding a different rhythm, one that opens the door to a new kind of future.
Email me at noemidado @ gmail.com for the password.
By Rob Anderson
Should I still feel so bad, should I still cry so often? I see other
parents smiling, why can’t I? I thought if I did my grief work, it
was supposed to get easier.
Grieving is hard work. Expectations of ourselves, and those that others
place on us, can confuse and make us think we should be in a certain
place at a certain time with our grief. Sometimes we hear, “Your child
died five years ago, aren’t you over it yet?” Or, “It’s been a long
time, why are you still crying?” Those comments hurt and push us
away. Early in my grief, I read the following which helped me
understand that I was fine where I was on my journey: Wherever you
are in your grief is exactly where you should be. To that I would add;
as long as you’re not abusing yourself or others, and not living in
chronic grief.