As I close this three-part series on grief—its collective echoes, its private chambers, its impossible tenderness—I find myself turning, as I always do this time of year, toward November.
It’s the month that holds everything.
Lily’s angelversary sits at its center like an ache I can feel before the calendar even flips. First in my dreams, then in my bones. My body always seems to remember before my mind gets the memo. One moment I’m functioning—answering texts, folding laundry. The next I’m swirling: emotional to numb, numb to sobbing on the dining room floor while her favorite pop songs pulse through the speakers, as if she’s just in the next room asking me to turn it up.
And then the next morning… nothing. A strange, hollow quiet. Not peace, not calm—just a blank space where last night’s tidal wave had been. It still startles me how grief moves like unpredictable weather, sweeping in and receding on its own terms.
November has a way of unearthing the memories I’ve tucked carefully into drawers.
I still see flashbacks of the morning we laid her to rest—the unbearable stillness of that day before she was cremated. I remember whispering words I hoped she could somehow hear, trying to memorize the weight of her presence in that final moment, even though she was already beyond reach.
And then there are the signs—the quiet, impossible gifts.
Like the ladybugs.
This November marks year three. How can that be? Time feels elastic now. And yet just last week, one landed on my leg out of nowhere. Another perched on my steering wheel as I sat in a grocery store parking lot trying to pull myself together. I remember thinking, It’s too cold for ladybugs now… isn’t it?
And yet, there they were.
Maybe ladybugs do hang around this late in the year. Maybe they don’t. But grief doesn’t always care about what’s likely or seasonally appropriate. There are things we feel in our bones before science or reason steps in. There are moments that arrive exactly when we need them, tiny wings carrying something larger than coincidence.
This year, something in me has shifted.
I’m learning that grief shows me exactly where I need care. It reveals the places in my body where I’m still carrying tension, sorrow, or fear—like it’s quietly saying, Here. This part needs tending.
And every autumn, as the leaves begin to fall, I’m reminded:
I can let go of the pain without letting go of her.
Never her.
But the pain—yes. That I can loosen, piece by piece, so the love has room to shine through the cracks. Grief isn’t linear. It’s seasonal. Cyclical. Layered. It returns like fall itself—asking me to release what’s too heavy to carry, while keeping what’s essential. And in its own strange way, I’m trying to be grateful for that.
As November approaches again, that familiar mix rises—fear of the pain, gratitude for the love, and the quiet hope that she might send me another small sign. A reminder that love doesn’t disappear. It changes form. It finds its way back to us.
So I step into this month with open hands, knowing I’ll likely swing between extremes: emotion and numbness, memory and dissociation, collapse and coping. But I also know this—every year, Lily meets me somewhere inside that swirl.
She always has.
And I trust she always will.
Grief, memory, and love keep twining together. And in this season—this tender, complicated November—I’m simply trying to hold it all.