Grief Touches Everything

For those of you who celebrated, I hope that Halloween brought some moments of joy and fun for you. And for those of you celebrating Día de los Muertos, I hope this time is bringing you some beautiful moments of remembrance and connection.

This Halloween was a milestone one for me - it was my first one without my sister Melissa. It was also my first one without Nessa, our 14-year-old black cat who we said goodbye to the day after Halloween last year (our grief for our pets is so very real).

On the outside, my Halloween looked the same as the years before it. My family decorated with gusto and loaded up on candy. We all donned costumes (me as a witch, my husband as a wizard, and my two kids as a cat and a bat). We did our annual viewings of “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

But on the inside? It was clear that Halloween is one of many things in my life that will never be the same.

I haven’t celebrated Halloween with my sister in decades; she lived in North Carolina, and I live in Pennsylvania. In theory, I shouldn’t have felt her absence in the same ways I might for other holidays. And yet, there were so many moments when my grief hit me with full force amidst all our festive fun.

There was the moment I wanted to text my sister pictures of our costumes, and then I remembered that I can’t do that anymore.

There was the moment we pulled out the pumpkin headbands that she mailed to my kids a couple years ago, and then I remembered that there aren’t any more gifts coming in the mail.

There was her absence on the family group text thread, missing her trademark humor and wit.

And there was also me missing my sweet black Halloween kitty, wishing I could see her curled up on the couch or gazing out the window as we greeted trick-or-treaters.

In ways big and small, seen and unseen, grief touches everything. 

This is the part that people who aren’t grieving don’t always understand. They don’t see all the little moments when grief visits us, all the ways that our loss touches every piece of our lives. They don’t know how often we keep those moments to ourselves, unspoken and unwitnessed.

What are the little ways that your grief is showing up today, whether you are grieving a loved one or some other loss? What does your grief touch that no one else sees?

Whether your grief lies in the big moments or in the small moments in between, whether it is spoken or unspoken, it is real and deserving of care. My tender heart is sending love to yours.