I’d be lying if I said this hasn’t changed me, because it has in deeply personal ways that will impact how I move forward, who I trust, how I decide to spend my time, my tolerance for people who don’t actually serve me and my purpose, the way I love, and even my relationship with my body. 

Grief has a way of stripping people down to the barest, most raw form. Things that felt important suddenly aren’t too important anymore. Small talk is exhausting, I crave deep personal connections. Surface level relationships feel forced and hollow, I want depth, I want to know a persons dreams and goals, what’s scary and what brings them joy. Pretending to be okay when you’re falling apart is impossible somedays, because when you spend countless hours in hospitals, waiting rooms, doctors offices, and waiting on phone calls, CT Scans, MRI’s, and answers that never really come, you quickly realize how fragile everything is. Time becomes so valuable, because it can be taken from you in an instant. 

I don’t have the same tolerance for people who only show up when it benefits them, for relationships built on convenience instead of genuine care, or for environments that make me feel small, kept in a box, just so others feel comfortable. Watching someone you love slowly lose pieces of themselves, not once but three times now, changes the way you see everything around you. It forces you to ask yourself hard questions about how you want to move forward, how you want to live and love. It makes you question who actually deserves access to you, when you once gave that so freely, and whether you’re actually allowing yourself to be seen and known by those you choose to let in. 

Somewhere along the way my relationship with my body flipped. Swimming stopped becoming about the appearance or exercise somewhere along the way and became a coping mechanism, because anxiety is just energy in the body with nowhere to go. The water became home again, it became the place where my mind processes things at a certain depth that makes the world slow down and allows me breathe. The laps became therapy, the laps became a way to release things I usually would hold onto, the anger and helplessness that sits inside me and beside me. The exhaustion felt better than dealing with this in the ways I have in the past, just shoving it down. There’s something comforting about pushing your body to its own limits and even past those limits when emotionally you’re stripped down and stretched thin.

Grief has definitely made me softer in ways and sharper in others. Softer towards those carrying the invisible, softer toward myself on the days I can barely hold on, because it is okay to feel it, its okay to sit in it, and let it wrack you until you can move forward. Sharper because I can’t allow what I once did and that comes with cutting people off you once thought you wanted there and selective in those I let in from now on. Life is fragile and I know that now in a way I didn’t before. Maybe that’s the cruelest part of grief – once you know how quickly life can change you can never not know it again. 

Maybe that’s why I hold on tightly to the Shutterfly Books and moments in my life that feel real, raw, and vulnerable now. That’s why I find myself cherishing things more than before, go on walks without a phone and just revel in the silence that I once couldn’t stand, have found that staring at a phone screen doesn’t give me the same “hit” it once did, in fact its tiring. The real moments, the human moments, the memories are the ones I cling to in the moments of grief and yes sometimes it makes the what’s to come terrifying. The memories that fill my thoughts are those of Charlotte trips, Lang Van, ACC Championship Games, Panthers Games, Clemson Tailgates, Clemson games all around, Airstream trips, The Great Out West Adventure, so many more, and in those moments time was moving even when none of us noticed it. They all matter just oh so differently now, everything matters differently now. 

There is a strange loneliness that comes with anticipatory grief because the person is still here, but parts of them are slowly changing or vanishing in front of you. It’s weird to grieve the person who is sitting next to you or across from you, existing with you, making you laugh, giving you advice, but sometimes grief starts long before death. The grief starts in the moments of quiet, the loss of words, the loss of names, memories, and people, it starts with subtle shifts that others may not notice. The watching you forget is the hardest part. Suddenly blood work becomes oil changes, and paperwork, discharge papers, and consent forms become car titles, but that’s you now.

Now there’s a present time and a future time and I live in both simultaneously. The present where were still making memories, Clemson Games, Angus Barn Dinners, Birthday Dinners, making plans for road trips, and talking about random life things. The future one filled with more hospital stays, hard conversations, more difficult decisions, and learning how to exist and live in a world you’re no longer here. Grief, makes you rehearse losses before they even happen. 

It’s not lost on me that, no matter how hard this gets, life keeps happening anyway. The sun still rises, people fall in love, friends ask you to dinner, the music still plays, and the world doesn’t stop spinning, not for anyone. Just because it feels like my world cracked wide open the world doesn’t stop spinning. That’s nothing new to me and that’s something I’ve grown to be okay with, because somewhere along the way it becomes apart of learning how to survive this. Grief and Joy can sit in the same room, because everyone is going through something different. I can cry on my way home leaving doctors appointments, because the news just get worse, but I can also laugh at something funny, smile at the memories, and make new ones. Loving deeply and grieving deeply will forever be intertwined, because we deeply grieve those we deeply loved. 

Strength to me used to mean holding it all together, keeping it in, staying composed no matter what was happening around me. Strength isn’t any of that, strength is allowing yourself to feel it fully without letting it turn you bitter, making you hard, it’s somehow staying soft in the midst of what you’re going through. It’s also crying on the bathroom floor, wrapped in towel, and still showing up the next day. Its letting people into the dark corners of yourself and letting them love you when you would much rather be alone. It’s being hopeful even when fear sits beside you and sometimes settles in you. 

Somewhere, somehow, hope still exists in the midst of grief too. In the middle of MRI result discussions, medication changes, and deciding on palliative care or hospice care, somewhere in the middle of it hope finds a way in. It’s not always in big, loud, and huge ways, but sometimes it shows up quietly knocking on the doors you’ve not opened yet. It still shows up in the good days, the good doctors appointments, in moments where the old you shows up in glimpses at the dinner table, watching football, talking about cars, and watching you watch Stella and Drexel play in the pool or in the yard. Hope still exists in the simple fact that you are still living in this world and I or we get more time with you, even thought it will never be enough. 

Enough… what quantifies enough, what amount of time will ever be enough, I don’t have that answer, not when it comes to the people we love the most. I don’t think anyone ever really reaches a point where they say, “Yea, I’ve had enough time now.” Especially not with a parent, not with the very person who has shaped the very foundation of who you are. Who you are at your core, the person who made you try that one thing you love now, that person who always said “15 minutes early or you’re late”, the person who taught you how to do life, how to live, and so much more