Grief Doesn’t Get Easier, It Just Changes Form

3 years.

They say grief gets easier with time.

I don’t think it gets easier.

It just changes form.

In those first few days, weeks, and months, I was lost in my own grief. I had to remind myself to breathe and was forced out of bed.

Depression overtook my very being.

As we neared the one year mark, I began looking for ways to continue honor mom. That’s when we decided to complete her bucket list.

By year two, I was seeing a transformation not only in my grief, but in who I was without my mom.

Colby asked me recently if my grief is for myself or my kids.

Three years later, yes, some of it is for myself still. I miss my mom.

But, my kids talk about her often. She was their only grandmother. Every sense of normal “grandparents” has all but disappeared for them.

We quote her often and remember her always.

Mostly, I miss the great-grandma she would have been to Riley. She would have loved her (almost) as much as I do.

I have no doubt that she would have been my greatest competition in loving that sweet girl. I hate that both she and Riley are missing that.

That Avery, our granddaughter due in October, will miss that.

My mom would have reveled at being a great grandma.

Instead, we do our best to keep her memory alive and to tell Riley Mae stories of her namesake.

Her bucket list adventure this year was the “ultimate RV trip.” The pandemic has changed the trip we were going to do, but we have a different one planned at the end of the month.

Today we’ll just spend the day together as a family, as we do most days, and enjoy some of her famous cheese enchiladas.

It’s all about being together and celebrating the memory of her. It’s all we have, so it has to be enough.