Intro
Life after caregiving is something people don’t often talk about. For 25 years, my life was centered around my daughter—every hour of every day shaped by her needs. When she passed, I was left grieving not only her but also the rhythm of caregiving that had defined me for so long. Suddenly, there was no one who needed me 24/7. The silence was overwhelming. Over time, though, I’ve learned that living with loss also means finding ways to fill the quiet, to honor her memory while slowly discovering who I am beyond caregiving.
The Rhythm of Caregiving Mornings
A typical day with my daughter began around 5 or 6 a.m. with her calling, “Mommy! Daddy!”—pulling me out of a deep sleep. I’d stumble into her room, bleary-eyed, still half in a dream, and there she’d be: arms reaching out, her sweet voice chirping, “Hi Mommy!” That hug always came first, and it made the early start bearable. Who could stay grumpy after a greeting like that?
Once she was wrapped in her robe and slippers, she was grinning and ready to go, no matter how restless the night before. Before I even thought about coffee, I’d be dropping bread into the toaster because she wanted breakfast the second she left her room. She ambled happily to the kitchen while I shuffled behind her, trying to catch up. Good Morning America would be humming in the background while I packed her lunch, the same rhythm every day. No matter how hard I tried, she always beat me to the alarm clock. She was my alarm clock.
When the Silence Arrived
Lily loved noise. She made her feelings and wants known, asking for the daily schedule over and over while the TV hummed with the weather in the background. After she was gone, the silence was so loud, so uncomfortable, I didn’t know what to do with it. For months I felt unmoored, my days stretched out with no one needing me every hour.
Now, almost three years later, my mornings are very different. I wake up when my body tells me to—no urgent voice calling me out of sleep. The first thing I do is make coffee, just for myself, and carry it to my favorite armchair. There, in the quiet, I write my morning pages. It’s a slower rhythm, softer, though sometimes the silence still feels almost too loud.
Filling the Quiet with Writing and Travel
Slowly, I began filling that space in small ways. Writing gave me a place to put the ache, and it reminded me that I still had a voice, even if hers was missing. Then, little by little, I started saying yes to freedom. Trips I never could have taken before, new places waiting to be explored. Travel didn’t erase the grief—it never could—but it gave me something else: motion, discovery, the reminder that life still held joy and surprise.
Recently, I took a camping trip to Lassen, and it felt like another step in this new chapter. Being in nature, listening to the wind in the trees and the birds calling, hiking trails that stretched for miles—it was beyond anything Lily could have managed. She was a homebody who loved her routine and creature comforts. I know, unequivocally, she would have hated it.
And somehow, that makes it easier for me to do these things. To step into experiences that were never hers, but are now mine. It doesn’t feel like I’m leaving her behind, but rather, carrying her with me as I step into the freedom I couldn’t embrace during my 25 years of caregiving.
Carrying Lily with Me
Grief is not a straight line. Some mornings I still wake expecting to hear her voice, calling me out of sleep. Some days the silence still presses in, heavy and strange. But I’ve also learned that the quiet can hold new beginnings if I let it.
Traveling, writing, sitting with my coffee in the armchair—these aren’t replacements for Lily. They are ways of remembering that my life has room for both love and loss, sorrow and joy. She taught me how to greet the day with a smile, even when I was stumbling through exhaustion. Now, almost three years later, I carry that lesson into the world, whether I’m filling notebook pages at dawn or hiking a trail she never would have wanted to walk.
She was my alarm clock once. Now, she is the steady heartbeat that reminds me to keep living, even in the silence.