There is this weird relief after anticipatory grief ends.
I thought it would break me when it happened.
After years of circling grief, every hospital stay, every update that used the word “decline,” I thought the end would tare something essential apart.
But it didn’t. Instead, it was quiet. Still.
I didn’t cry the way I thought I would.
Not when the call came.
Not during the endless days at the hospital.
Not during that final stretch when all you can do is say good bye, over and over again.
Not even at the funeral.
I cried more in the months leading up to it, over oil changes and bar-b-ques, than I did when it was actually over.
That’s the part no one talks about.
How long grief can last before the loss. It's in the waiting, the bracing. It's the way your body learns to live in this suspended state, somewhere between hope and inevitability.
Grief takes up residence in your body early, as dread and tension and tragedies rehearsed in the shower. You practice losing them a thousand times before it’s real.
So when it finally happens, sometimes there’s… nothing. No breakdown. No dramatic sobbing. Just stillness.
Or relief.
And then guilt. For feeling that relief.
It's not that it didn't hurt.
I loved him. I still do.
But the waiting broke me more than the goodbye. Grief built a home in me and when it was over, it didn't arrive. It just stopped evolving.
And now that it’s over, I’m not sure what to do with the part of me that was always bracing.
No one tells you how weird it feels to not have to check your phone every ten minutes. How do you learn to live without the constant fear of losing them?
To not measure time between updates.
To sleep.
To actually sleep.
I keep expecting a wave to hit me. A breakdown, or something dramatic.
But all I feel is space. And a kind of numb clarity.
Like I’ve walked out of a long storm into a quiet room and now I don’t know who I am without the thunder.
If you’ve been there, I see you.
If you haven’t, I hope you never are.
There’s no right way to grieve. But I wish we talked more about how relief is part of it too. It feels shameful, but it's real.
That part never made it into the Hallmark cards.
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