Welcome to Life After Lil

​ Every June we plant flowers for Lily. When she was alive, planting day was less of a cherished family tradition and more of a negotiation. She hated it. Bruce finally built a flower wall just her size so she could reach every planter, hoping it would make the whole experience more appealing. It didn’t. She still complained. We still laughed. Somehow the flowers got planted anyway. Now we plant them because she’s gone. Every June I find myself standing in front of that same flower wall, pressing new life into the soil while remembering the little girl who wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Grief rarely announces itself. It waits in ordinary places. Sometimes it waits in a song. Sometimes in the grocery store. Sometimes it’s tucked between a petunia and a marigold. This year it found me there. Not all at once. Just enough to make everything feel a little heavier. I slept later than usual. I felt restless without knowing exactly why. I found myself spending far too m...

Somewhere between desert mornings, long hikes, and quiet evenings outside the trailer, I found myself sitting with a thought I had avoided saying out loud for a long time: I think everything happens for a reason. Even writing those words feels risky in grief spaces. I understand why so many grieving people struggle with that phrase. When spoken carelessly, it can make devastating loss feel reduced to a lesson instead of something sacred and unbearable. I know what it feels like to hear explanations when what you need is presence. And I would never want to do that. The truth is, when I say everything happens for a reason, I don’t mean that every tragedy has a purpose or that every loss can be explained. I don’t know why Lily died. I never will. What I mean is that I believe there is meaning woven through our lives, even when we can’t see it. I believe our experiences shape us in ways we often don’t understand until much later. And sometimes what initially feels senseless reveals somethi...