A Companion, Not a Project

On grief that doesn't come with a deadline

Here’s something I’ve been sitting with lately.

Grief doesn’t sit still.

At least, mine doesn’t. And from sitting with so many grievers this past year and a half, I’ve noticed it doesn’t sit still for most of us. It shape shifts. It hides. It comes back wearing a different outfit. Some mornings it’s a held breath. Some afternoons it's a song playing over the grocery store speakers that I have to abandon my cart for. Some nights it’s the quiet realization that I laughed today, really laughed, and I’m not sure how to hold that next to the missing.

If any of that lands, I’m glad to be sitting beside you.

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The landscape of grief is wild. Truly. Nobody handed me a map when Wendem died, and even if they had, I’m not sure it would have done much good. Because the terrain keeps changing under my feet.

One morning I wake up and the air feels almost soft. I can drink my coffee. I can answer a text. I can be a person in the world. And then by lunchtime, something I didn’t see coming, a smell, a stranger’s laugh, the way the light hits a certain corner of the kitchen, and suddenly I’m somewhere else entirely. Somewhere wordless. Somewhere I didn’t pack a bag for.

Some days I think I’ve found my footing, only to realize the ground was never really solid. It was just quiet for a while.

Some weeks feel like long, slow exhales. Some weeks feel like I’m holding my breath through every single hour.

And then there are the ambush days. The ones that don’t announce themselves. A Facebook memory. A receipt in a coat pocket. A kid in the grocery store who tilts his head just the way my boy used to. A Monday that should have been ordinary suddenly cracking wide open in the middle of an errand.

I used to think the unpredictability meant something was wrong with me. That a more “evolved” griever would have it more sorted by now. That somewhere out there, other grieving people had their grief on a leash and I was the only one whose grief kept slipping off and running into traffic.

But from what I’m noticing, the unpredictability isn’t a malfunction. It seems to be the actual nature of the thing.

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I was talking with another griever this week, and she said something that’s been rolling around in my chest ever since.

“I thought by now I’d know what I was doing.”

Oh. Same.

I think a lot of us quietly absorb the idea that grief is supposed to be linear. That we’ll graduate from one stage to the next, tidy and on schedule. I understand now, both as a griever and as an educator, that grief doesn’t actually move that way, but the old story still whispers sometimes. Knowing and feeling are not the same thing.

From where I’m standing, as a grieving mom very much in it, grief doesn’t really seem to be a project with a deadline. It isn’t a wound that closes and stays closed. It feels more like a living, breathing companion walking beside us. Sometimes whispering. Sometimes howling. Sometimes just there. Quiet. Present. Heavy as a held hand.

And the ground keeps shifting. The grief I carried in those first raw months after losing Wendem is not the grief I carry today. Some days it’s softer. Some days it knocks the wind out of me all over again, and I just have to sit down on the kitchen floor and breathe.

I don’t think that’s failure. I don’t think it’s regression. It feels, to me, like being human in a body that loved someone.

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Here’s what I keep coming back to, and I’m offering it gently in case it resonates.

Maybe nobody is behind.
Maybe nobody is doing it wrong.
Maybe there isn’t a “should” in this at all.

Maybe the only honest thing we can say about grief is that it moves how it moves, and our only real job is to keep meeting it where it shows up.

If today feels lighter than yesterday, beautiful. Hold it gently.
If today feels like the floor disappeared again, also beautiful. Also holy. Also part of this.
If today feels like nothing in particular, just a low hum, that counts too.
If it’s hard to even name what today is, and it’s all just kind of a fog, that seems to count too.

From what I’m noticing, grief isn’t a performance. It isn’t a curriculum. It isn’t a thing we pass or fail. It isn’t a straight line, and it isn’t even really a circle. It’s more like weather. Some seasons are stormy. Some are still. Some skies do things you didn’t know skies could do.

It seems more like a slow, lifelong evolution. An integration. A learning to live alongside. Not a getting over.

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The other day I caught myself reaching for my phone to text Wendem. Not someone about Wendem. Wendem. Like my thumb just knew where to go. And I held the phone for a long minute. Didn't cry. Didn't spiral. Just held it. And whispered, I love you. I miss you. I'm still here.

That’s a kind of grief, too, I think. The kind that’s quiet. The kind that’s woven in. The kind that doesn’t need an audience or a milestone or a clean ending.

So wherever this finds whoever’s reading, whether newly broken open or further along the road, wave cresting or wave receding, in a season of soft skies or storm skies or skies you’ve never seen before, able to name it or not,

There’s a chair.
There’s room at the table.
Nobody has to have it figured out to belong here.

With so much love,
Jamie 🤍

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If anything in here resonated, I’d love to hear what shape your grief is taking this week. Only if you feel like sharing.

P.S. A little housekeeping, in case it's useful. All of the past Grief Table pieces and newsletters are archived here if you ever want to wander through them. And every other resource I've put together lives here. The table's always open.