The idea of loss and grief is something we learn about at a very young age but it’s something I’m not sure we ever fully understand at any age. Before I lost my parents I experienced all kinds of grief. Starting from a young age losing pets. I remember feeling extreme sadness as a child when I learned my friend who lived across the street every summer had lost her mother in a car accident. I remember the sadness and the confusion as a seven year old when my grandfather passed and again as a teen losing my much loved uncle to suicide.

I didn’t think I was a stranger to grief. Hell I took an entire unit in university on dying, death and grieving. What I failed to realize until this week was the dynamic effects of grief. The way it would be tangible. I didn’t realize I’d taste it, smell it, feel it physically. I never thought about the fact I would hold my grief in my hands., I never realized my grief would become not only a feeling but an emotion that would take over in even the most mundane and obscure moments.

My grief has found its way into the very back of my memory card catalog so to speak. Surfacing memories I didn’t even realize I held. The way my Mom would quietly tiptoe around the cabin on summer vacation to make a pot of coffee and toast. She needed her coffee but didn’t want to wake the rest of us so early. The way the mixture of fresh coffee and cigarette smoke was my normal morning scent greeting at home and at the cabin. The way she’d always tuck one leg under her and pull her other knee up to her chest and stretch her nightshirt around her legs as she sipped her coffee and smoked her morning cigarette. This morning I tiptoed through the cabin to make myself toast and sat at the table listening to my little family snore. I imagine that’s exactly the sound she was listening to all those mornings.

When my brother opened my Dad’s fishing tackle box a couple weeks ago I was instantly transported back to standing on the shore of Dry lake. The smell of that tackle box is a lifetime of memories. It’s tangible and I can touch it, smell it. It’s a literal box of memories and grief. It’s bittersweet.

Yesterday at the Bridge-lake fair I caught myself frozen, staring at a piece of lemon meringue pie that if I didn’t know better thought my momma had made. It’s moments like that no one warns you about. No one told me a hunk of pie was going to punch me in the gut one sunny summer Sunday afternoon. No one told me a day later I’d regret not having eaten the pie to see if it was anything like the ones I spent my childhood enjoying. No one talks about these moments but I think they are normal. I doubt I’m alone in these experiences. Obviously everyone’s grief is different but in my circles no one really talks about it at all. Why are we weathering this alone?

I hear my parents voice in my head sometimes. Standing in front of a rustic miners cabin at 108 ranch I heard my Dad chuckle and announce “there’s a little shanty I could afford!!”. Without hesitation I glanced around knowing he wasn’t there but having to reassure myself this wasn’t all a bad dream and maybe he was there with us.

I heard my Moms voice urging Jacob “No deeper” as he swam in the crystal clear waters of Green lake. I heard her laughter every time I saw a chipmunk steal a nut and run as fast as his little legs could carry him. I felt her presence every time a dragon fly shared a moment with us in the past 10 days. I know physically they are gone but memory and grief are powerful things.

I didn’t expect to quietly cry as often as I do.

I didn’t expect it to be like this.

This isn’t the grief I expected.