Chapter Two — Grief Shows Up Late

I walked away from my job just as the world was closing in.

What I didn’t realize then was how little space there would be between one loss and the next.

As I tried to move forward, my body began asking for attention in ways I could no longer ignore. Within months of leaving work, I underwent a double knee replacement. Recovery was still fragile when my father became seriously ill, and my focus shifted again — this time to helping my family navigate a dark and uncertain season.

When my father passed, the grief devastated my mother.

In the months that followed, we began losing her too — not all at once, but in small, heartbreaking ways. The woman we knew slowly receded as grief reshaped her days, her confidence, her ability to be alone.

Eventually, she required twenty-four-hour care.

There was no room to pause. No space to sit with my own grief. What needed to be done eclipsed what needed to be felt.

We placed her in a beautiful home, believing we were doing the most loving thing possible — for her, and for all of us.

And then COVID arrived.

The isolation was devastating.

For her.
For us.

Each day required steadiness, logistics, reassurance.

I kept showing up.
I kept moving.
I kept carrying what needed to be carried.

Looking back, I can see that grief did not arrive in a single wave. It layered itself quietly. It waited through surgeries and hospital rooms, through responsibility and endurance, through a world that suddenly felt smaller and more fragile.

I didn’t collapse under it.

I carried it.

And it wasn’t until much later — when urgency finally loosened its grip — that I understood how much I had been holding.

When I finally slowed down, I wasn’t just recovering from work — I was recovering from years of holding more than anyone could see.

Grief did not ask me to be stronger.
It asked me to be honest.

And honesty, I would learn, is where healing begins.