“Grief is memory visiting you through tears”
I wrote that line one day when I realized grief isn’t something that simply fades with time. Living with grief means realizing it lingers, quiet but patient, waiting in the corners of memory. Sometimes it comes softly, with the warmth of remembering a laugh or a tender moment. Other times, it rushes in, uninvited, heavy and unstoppable. And almost always, it arrives through tears — not just tears of pain, but tears that remind me of the love and the life that made the grief possible.
Life has a way of pushing us forward, and often we suppress our grief until there’s a “better” time — or until we’re alone in the shower, the car, or the middle of the night. By then, the dam has been building from all the little everyday moments our subconscious keeps cataloging. Eventually, the weight of it bursts into waves of grief we can no longer contain.
This has happened to me many times since Lil passed. One of the heaviest moments of grief and loss came not after, but in the middle of it all — when she was admitted to the hospital. The bad news came in waves, one after another, but there were decisions to make, doctors to talk to, family to call. There was no time to break down, so I sealed away the shock and trauma. That pit inside me grew heavier with each wave of sorrow. If I didn’t release it regularly, it boiled over into a storm of feelings and thoughts that felt unbearable.
Recently, I participated in a ceremony that went straight to the heart of that pain. It felt like an arrow piercing the armor I had carefully built around myself. Suddenly, the grief I had suppressed poured out in wave after wave of unprocessed emotion. It was overwhelming, deep, but also cathartic — like a release that had been long overdue. That was one of the most profound steps in my grief journey, teaching me that healing comes when we finally allow ourselves to feel.
What I’m learning is that coping with grief means understanding it will always find a way through. We can push it down, but eventually, it visits us — through tears, through memories, through sudden moments we can’t prepare for. And maybe that’s not something to fear. Maybe grief and love are forever intertwined: proof that a life mattered so deeply that it still ripples through our own.
And it isn’t always sorrow. Just today, I looked at my phone, where I keep rotating pictures of my daughter. One came up of her smiling, out and about in town, her sweet little face lighting up the screen. In that moment, my heart swelled, and I couldn’t help but smile back at her.
Maybe that’s what healing from grief really looks like — not the absence of tears, but the ongoing conversation between love and memory.
- If you’re living with grief too, know that you’re not alone. I’d love to hear how memory and love show up for you — feel free to share in the comments.