July 1st

I startled awake from a nightmare into what I thought was almost-morning; I could see a sliver of light under the bathroom door. My watch said 5:10, which is ten minutes past my alarm! I got up, grabbed the workout clothes I’d staged at the foot of the bed, brushed my teeth, and put my contacts in.

Then I looked at my phone.

4:07 AM.

My watch had glitched, and I’d dressed for a day that hadn’t started yet. And since my contacts were already in, I thought: fine. I’m up. I checked my sleep app. Six and a half hours. I told myself this was close enough to my goal.

Besides, it’s July 1st — the anniversary of my son Michael’s death.

Thirteen years. Last night, Tom asked how I was doing, and I said I thought I was learning to carry the grief a little easier. And I believed that when I said it. But then I woke up two hours before I needed to, and felt it — right there in my body, that particular weight. Grief doesn’t disappear. You just get stronger, or the load shifts, or some days both.

I tried to find something useful on my meditation app. Searched “death anniversary.” Found a talk. Listened.

Set a place for them at the table. Do something they loved to do. Gather with friends, share a meal, share memories.

I closed the app.

Those are beautiful rituals. They are not my rituals. They don’t apply to the kind of loss I carry — the kind that doesn’t have a chair that once belonged to someone, the kind that doesn’t have many memories, the kind that exists in a particular liminal space where even the shape of grief is hard to explain to people who haven’t lived it.

So, I went for a walk instead. That’s my ritual, and I recorded myself rambling into my phone, the way I’ve been doing lately — finding that when I speak, things surface that don’t come when I sit down to write. Threads I didn’t know I was following. Nuggets, I call them. Generative scraps.

I’m grateful, this morning, for the people I have found who understand this. For the work I get to do helping others who carry it too. For Tom, who gives me grace and helps me learn to give it to myself. For thirteen years of figuring out, slowly, what carrying this actually means.