v.42 It’s Not Their Loss To Remember: On Love, Grief and Moving Forward
Welcome to Life, Created—a new [old school] blog for modern times. This twice-a-week(ish) dispatch is a space for us to dig deeper, share ideas, recognize microjoys and build community beyond the mindless scroll.
Five years ago today, my 32-year-old nephew was murdered in a random act of violence. And every time I say that out loud or write it down, it still doesn’t sound real. It’s the kind of sentence you don’t expect to have to carry around for the rest of your life, but here I am, doing just that. He’d be 37 now. Ten years younger than me. And yet, only one of us keeps getting older. That fact will never stop breaking my heart. There is no coming back from something like this. There is only before and after. And I live in the “after” every day.
I remember exactly where I was when I got the call from my mamabear. I remember the way the air changed around me, how time folded in on itself. I remember how I walked into my tiny bathroom and dropped to the floor. I remember how my whole body knew before my brain caught up. It was an ordinary Saturday, turned unbearable. And that kind of grief doesn’t end. It shapeshifts. It quiets down for a bit, then returns without warning. But it’s always there. Every year on this day, as in Jewish ritual, I light a Yarzheit candle in his honor. I sit with my sadness, with the deep knowing that he should still be here. I wonder who he’d be now. What he’d be doing. I wonder if he’d laugh at the same jokes or if life would have softened him more by now. I’ll never get those answers, at least not in the way we think of ‘answers’ in the physical realm. But I’ll also never stop asking.
Here’s something about grief that I’ve come to understand: after a few years, people forget. And they’re not wrong for that. They’re not bad friends or careless or unkind. It just isn’t their loss to hold. We all do this, offer love and support in the early days, then move forward with our own lives, because we have to. And the truth is, we’re not built to carry every single grief of every single person we love. That kind of emotional weight would crush us. So we let go of what isn’t ours. And still... I remember. I always will.
This day is layered. It always has been. It’s the anniversary of my nephew’s death, but also the anniversary of my grandmother’s passing, forty years ago, I think. And it’s also the birthday of a dear friend. Somehow, life keeps folding all of it into the same 24 hours. And it reminds me of something I’ve learned the hard way: joy and sorrow can live side by side. They have to. Because that’s what life is. Not either/or, but both/and. It’s the pain and the beauty. The heartbreak and the hope. The laughter that finds you even when you’re sitting in the middle of your grief. That lesson? That truth? It was the beginning of Microjoys for me. I didn’t have a name for it back then. But that seed was planted right here, in the middle of the worst moment of my life.
So today, I remember my nephew. I light the candle. I let myself feel it all. I don’t rush past the ache. I honor it. Because this is mine to carry. And while the world may forget, while others move on, my family never will. We couldn’t if we tried.
This week’s microjoy: Loss cracks us open in ways we never ask for. And still, in the quiet after, life offers moments that soften the ache. That tension between grief and grace is its own kind of sacred.
Even that is a microjoy, tender and worth noticing.
P.S. Per usual, if this resonated with you- PLEASE repost, comment, share and spread the word.
Welcome to Life, Created.
With love, wisdom [and small mercies] from Montclair. xx
