For eighteen years, Brianne was Baby Girl. Then Shar was born, and Brianne became the middle girl.

When Shar was little more than a toddler, Bri would tell her, “I’m Baby Girl.”

“No,” Shar would insist “I’m Baby Girl.”

Despite the age gap between them, they were both right. Bri grew into the role of big sister without ever losing what she’d always been to her father.

Her fondest memory takes her back to when she was still Baby Girl. She remembers being scrunched in the back of her dad’s Corvette with his tools for the drive from San Jose to Los Angeles because the only other option was sitting on her sister’s lap in the front seat.

Al was a union man through and through. American-made wasn’t just a preference, it was a point of pride. Bri spent most of her adult life driving anything but.

Then she bought her first American car, a hybrid.

“I’m glad my dad got to see me drive American before he passed,” she told me.

As she shared that memory, I realized it wasn’t really about the car.

It was one way she carries him with her.

They were remarkably alike, more than they probably realized. So much so that they were bound to clash from time to time. Two people with the same instincts, the same convictions, and the same stubborn determination don’t always see eye to eye. But they always found their way back to each other. He was the one person she could call for any battle. The one who could reach her when no one else could. The one she could be honest with, angry with, or messy with, without explanation or apology.

What held them together wasn’t simply love. It was a shared language.

They could unite against a problem with a single phone call. Sometimes all she needed was his confirmation that she wasn’t crazy for thinking the way she did. They challenged each other’s thinking, debated ideas, and wrestled with the unfairness of life together. They dreamed out loud without objections or listening to anyone who thought they should be practical. Their conversations weren’t about whether something could be done. They were about how they would do it, how grand it would be.

That was their daddy-daughter relationship.

When Al entered an acute rehabilitation facility, Bri was there. She brought business books during her visits. Sometimes they discussed them together. Other times she read quietly while he rested. Even inside hospital walls, Bri refused to let every conversation belong to cancer. Between discussions about treatment and prognosis, they still dreamed about the future, about one day going into business together.

“When he was in the hospital, I believed he was coming home. I held on to that so completely that I made plans around it. There was a FasTrak toll bill I told myself I’d pay once he recovered, like paying it was something we’d do together on the other side of this. He didn’t come home.”

Until the very end, she kept both his mind and hers focused on what came next.

Bri approached his rehab the same way she approached everything else in life. She prepared. Not just as his daughter hoping for the best but as someone who had done the homework, someone who was part of his care team. When Al complained that the hospital water tasted off, she arrived with a water bottle outfitted with a Brita filter so he could enjoy every glass. When it looked as though he might be discharged, she ordered a grabber so he wouldn’t risk falling from his wheelchair if he dropped something. She also bought a dressing stick so he could safely put on his Tommy Bahama shirt or Corvette jacket. If there was a treatment to research, she researched it. If there was equipment that could make life easier, she found it. She never waited to be asked. She identified the need, explored the options, and made sure it appeared.

She was always thinking three steps ahead.

When her dad passed, her first instinct was not to send flowers. It was to send consumables.

Bri thought of the things no one thinks about until they’re needed. Plates. Napkins. Plastic silverware. Paper towels. Toilet tissue. People would gather, make a small plate, hangout and eventually make another. She ordered everything from Costco and Target and had it delivered. Before it ran out or became a problem, she had a solution in motion because that’s what she always did.

That was how Bri loved.

Each daughter grew up believing that whatever the problem was, Dad could fix it. Whether it was car trouble, an unexpected crisis, or problems at work, they knew that, come hell or high water, he’d handle it. They could count on him to defend, protect and walk through it with them.

For Bri, he wasn’t just her father.

He was her anchor.

When you lose your anchor, you don’t simply grieve the person. You lose your bearings. The phone calls you would have made become conversations that never happen. She misses the conversations that only he could give her. “The ones that put me back together when I needed it…those are just gone now.” The ideas you would have bounced off someone else stay trapped inside your own head. Every difficult decision carries a little more weight because the one person who understood how your mind worked is no longer there to think it through with you.

Bri acknowledges the pandemic had already cost her eighteen months with her father, time she could never reclaim. It shaped her grief in ways she didn’t fully understand until much later.

“It showed up in a strange way. There was a day I blocked the tow truck with my own car so it couldn’t tow a stranger’s vehicle. Someone out of town’s relative’s car. I told myself I was helping. It took me a while to understand I was really trying to protect somebody else’s reunion because I couldn’t have my own.”

His absence settled into each of our lives differently because grief demanded something uniquely personal from each of us.

For me, remembering became part of healing. I found comfort in journaling, telling stories, and writing When the Music Stops.

Bri couldn’t do that. The grief was too raw, and the weight of his absence was still too heavy. Even the happiest stories, or simply hearing his name, made her cry.

When she came to the house, his presence lingered throughout. His jackets still hung on the coat rack, his boots sat just inside the front door, his Corvette memorabilia rested on the TV stand, and the gifts she’d given him were still stacked in the corner.

Love doesn’t disappear when someone dies. It simply finds a different way to be expressed.

For me, it became words.

For Bri, it became something she could hold.

Something she could do.

She asked me to save his hospital blankets, welding bandanas, and IBEW shirts. She wanted to make a memory quilt, a way to keep him close when she missed him most.

And it wasn’t the only way she made sense of his absence.

“I wear all black every single day since March 10, 2023. I started when I lost my dad, and it hasn’t stopped. For a long time, nobody in my life knew why. People would buy me colorful things, not understanding, and I’d quietly set them aside. The black was mine. It was the one way I carried him with me every day without having to say a word or explain myself to anyone. I didn’t even tell anyone why until recently.”

For Bri, black is more than mourning, though grief is certainly part of it. It represents structure, discipline and steadiness, the very qualities her father lived and instilled in her. Wearing black has become a subtle way of carrying him forward.

Another is the life she’s building.

She works full time as a caregiver while also attending school full time to become a LVN. During her first year, she earned top marks on every exam. “I became someone who went to work caregiving instead of away from it. Everything about me wanting to work in healthcare traces back to him now. I treat every person I care for like they’re my family.”

Her father approached his work with craftsmanship. Every detail mattered. An electrical outlet that was a fraction of an inch out of level wasn’t “good enough” because he knew it could be better. That same commitment to doing things well is reflected in the care Bri brings to hers. She says that’s the part of her that emerged after losing him.

Different work. Different tools. Same standards.

She has found her own way to carry him forward.

Then there is Marqui, the firstborn.

She always knew her father was there, an invisible safety net she counted on without question. Learning to live without it has changed the way she moves through the world.

Her story comes next.

Bri’s story is part of the Daddy-Daughter Reflections on Caregiving and Loss series. If it resonated with you, I hope you’ll continue following the series. You’ll also find more of Bri’s story in When the Music Stops, now available on Amazon.

It was 2019. Shar had just graduated from St. John’s, and Al had officially retired. It was a special season in both their lives.

Graduation was in May. The Corvette reveal was in June. The pilgrimage to Bowling Green, Kentucky—the birthplace of the Corvette—was in August.

After graduation, Al and Shar attended the unveiling of the new C8 Corvette. Select Corvette clubs received VIP tickets that allowed members to attend the reveal. Chevrolet sponsored events in major cities across the country, and they drove to Los Angeles to be part of the excitement. They took pictures, attended presentations, sat in the new models, explored the specs and colors, and even had the opportunity to place a preorder. It was part unveiling, part exclusive car show.

Later that summer, we participated in the Corvette Caravan celebrating the 25th anniversary of the National Corvette Museum, which coincided with the launch of the new C8. It remains one of the most memorable road trips I’ve ever taken.

Corvette enthusiasts from across the country traveled together to Bowling Green. We drove from the Bay Area to join the Southern Route caravan and met up in Pasadena. Nine states and seven days later, we arrived in Kentucky alongside thousands of Corvettes we had picked up along the way.

I made the trip there, but Shar flew in for the journey home so her dad wouldn’t have to drive alone.

They made memories all along the way.

They visited the Lorraine Motel and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. They stopped at Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas; POPS 66 in Arcadia, Oklahoma, with its giant soda bottle and hundreds of soda bottles arranged by color; and The Tower Station and U-Drop Inn Café in Shamrock, Texas, made famous by the Pixar movie Cars.

We didn’t know it then, but it would be their last daddy-and-daughter trip.

Al’s numbers were beginning to rise again.

In 2021, we learned he would need another procedure, one similar to a transplant. I had been in a new job for less than ninety days when we received the news. New boss, new team. Appointments, testing, consultations, and preparation quickly consumed my days. I needed help.

Shar didn’t wait to be asked.

She decided she would help.

She quit her job and put her life on hold.

Throughout 2022, father and daughter developed a very different relationship, one that was sometimes loving, sometimes difficult, and occasionally tumultuous.

One of their biggest disagreements started with something as ordinary as a trip to the mall.

Al had only recently been cleared to be in public when he cut his hand in a Nike store. Because he was immunocompromised, even a seemingly routine injury carried real risk. Blood was running down his arm, but he wasn’t concerned. Shar was.

While trying to stop the bleeding, she was also asking store employees for help, explaining they now had a biohazard situation, and doing everything she could to keep blood from dripping onto the merchandise. At the same time, she was trying to convince her father to follow her directions. He wouldn’t.

It’s hard when the child has to become the voice of reason because the parent can no longer fully comprehend the danger.

I know because I had to do it with my mother when she had Alzheimer’s.

The simplest outings a restaurant, a shopping trip, or a quick errand can become stressful when you’re responsible for another adult’s safety. For a daughter who is also a caregiver, that burden can feel especially heavy.

Like her father, Shar was stubborn. She refused to compromise when it came to his well-being. She remained vigilant, always watching, always protecting, even when he protested.

They loved each other with what my mother used to call “a love untold.”

All three girls are daddy’s girls. But Shar, shared a different kind of bond with her father. Because of that, her loss carries its own heartbreak.

She will never have her dad walk her down the aisle.

Her children will never know Grandpa Al.

There are milestones her sisters experienced that she never will.

An old soul by nature, she carries that heartbreak quietly. Most people never see it because she keeps it tucked away. I didn’t fully understand how much until one day when she corrected me.

I called her “baby girl.”

She stopped me.

“That’s what we’ve always called you,” I said.

“No,” she replied. “That’s what Dad called me.”

That name has been retired, and that told me everything about the pain she continues to carry.

People often talk about grief as if it is a family experience, but grief is deeply personal. The three girls shared the same father, but each lost a different version of him.

Shar was the road-trip companion, the daughter who stepped in as a caregiver when he needed her most.

Her sisters’ relationships with him were different. Their memories are different. Their losses are different.

And Brianne, our middle girl, is the story I’ll share next.

Shar’s story is part of the Daddy-Daughter Reflections on Caregiving and Loss series. If it resonated with you, I hope you’ll continue following the series. You’ll also find more stories and reflections in When the Music Stops, now available on Amazon.

We were waiting for a call with Al’s test results when Kaiser Oncology flashed across the television screen. The call itself wasn’t surprising. The department was. We looked at each other and walked to the kitchen to take the call together. We put it on speaker. We couldn’t believe we were about to have a conversation about the c word. We couldn’t even say it out loud yet.

The nurse was brief. The results were in. They needed to schedule an appointment with the oncologist immediately.

At that appointment, the doctor explained Al’s diagnosis and recommended, an experimental bone marrow transplant. But before any of that could move forward, there were hurdles. A series of interviews to determine whether he was strong enough physically and mentally. Whether he had a stable support structure in place. Whether our insurance could sustain months of treatment without running out. They needed this to succeed as much as we did. We had to prove we were ready before they would give us the chance.

We cleared the hurdles. Al was approved.

Then we had to tell Shar.

Her dad and I came prepared. A united front, a carefully considered talk track, the Stanford patient care binder on the table between us. None of it mattered. She was furious that we had kept it from her, that weeks of appointments and decisions had happened without her knowledge. She made it clear, without room for negotiation, that she would be included from that point forward. We scheduled appointments in the afternoon when she could attend after school. We didn’t go to a family meeting again without her.

The first time we drove through the Stanford campus she looked out the window at the students moving between buildings and asked what all these people were doing there. We told her the hospital was on a college campus. That this was where her dad’s treatment would take place.

When we went in to meet the doctor, introductions had barely finished before she asked who was going to operate on her daddy. She was not interested in students or residents or anyone still in training. She wanted to know who the best was and whether he would be performing the procedure.

The man she was addressing was the Chief of the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He had performed thousands of bone marrow transplants. He assured her that her daddy would be in good hands because he would be performing the procedure himself.

She was satisfied. He had passed her interview.

Then it was Al’s turn. He told the team he understood the timeline they had in mind, but there was something they needed to know. His baby girl was graduating from elementary school in June. He would not be arriving in a wheelchair. He intended to walk. So whatever date they had in mind, they needed to work backwards from June, because that was the date that mattered.

The team adjusted the schedule accordingly.

Shar is the youngest of our three girls. At ten years old, she stepped into the dual role of daughter and caregiver, a role she would carry longer than any of us could have imagined.

She attended the caregiver classes. She learned how to monitor his symptoms, track his medications, and watch for the signs his body might be struggling against the chemical cocktails that were fighting to save him. She learned to give him injections when he couldn’t do it himself. Something I was too squeamish to manage. She did it with precision, exactly the way the nurses taught her.

She was intuitive in ways that still take my breath away.

One morning we dropped Al off at Stanford for an infusion before heading to school. After he got out of the car, as I pulled away from the curb, she asked if I thought Dad would crash. They had warned us what to look for, the signs that his body might not be able to hold on. I told her not to worry, that they would make sure he was stable before sending him home.

Around two o’clock that afternoon, the hospital called. He had crashed. He was being admitted.

They kept him for the remainder of his treatments. When they finally released him, he was strong enough to be at home but not yet strong enough to be around other people. He would need more time before he could safely be out in the world.

But he would be cleared before graduation.

He walked in on his own feet, unhurried but steady, to watch his baby girl cross the stage. With the help of his medical team, he had kept his word.

For a while after that, she got to just be Shar again. His baby girl. The one who had grown up faster than anyone asked her to and earned every moment of ordinary that followed.

The next time she would step into the caregiver role, she would do it as an adult.

That story is still unfolding.

Caregiving often asks more of a family than anyone expects. Sometimes the smallest shoulders carry the heaviest loads. If this story speaks to you, you’ll find more reflections on caregiving, grief, and resilience in When the Music Stops, now available on Amazon.

Love came, but it didn’t arrive in a dish.

Mom taught me that when people’s lives are upended, you cook. You bring food.

From the time she got the call that a family was going through something, she mobilized. She sat with the family first, understood who needed to be fed and how many, then she planned the meals, shopped the ingredients, and she and her crew got to work. What we now call a food train, she had already made a practice. I grew up watching her do it. I absorbed it without trying.

So, I showed up for other families the way she showed up. Signed up for food trains, often preparing more than one meal when I saw there was still a need. Showed up with casseroles and roasted chicken and pound cake with the certainty of someone who knew exactly how to offer love when someone’s life had suddenly changed.

And then one day, the casseroles were supposed to come to me.

They didn’t know I was waiting. Truthfully, there was no reason they would have.

For years, Al’s illness was ours. The three of us had built something most people couldn’t see into, and we kept it that way. The fight was too difficult to explain, and living with someone immunocompromised didn’t just suggest boundaries. It required them.

People knew he was sick. They just didn’t know how much caregiving had become our life. There was no clear moment that signaled to others that it was time to organize a meal train or show up with a casserole.

Life had changed dramatically. But the shift happened gradually, through years of adaptation and constant vigilance. Our world was shaped by treatments, transplants, infusions, and the rhythms of the hospital becoming more familiar than home.

Over time, those routines became normal to us. We learned to manage them, and I think many people assumed we had. The support they offered reflected the life they saw us living—rides to appointments, visits to the hospital, cards, prayers, and check-ins.

The love I’d seen pour into other families didn’t come in a dish. But it came.

Gift cards arrived without coordination. Whole Foods, DoorDash, cash, checks in the mail. There were no casseroles or plates covered in foil but, I never had to think about what we’d eat or worry about meal prep. Family and friends supplied enough to carry us through for weeks. The gift cards didn’t just feed us. They eliminated a decision tree we had no bandwidth for.

Our friends, church family, and his IBEW brothers gave Shar and me a break and visited him at the hospital. They called ahead before they came, let me know how long they planned to stay, gave a brief update when they left, how he seemed, what the staff had said. I didn’t ask them to do that. They just understood that a visitor is also the eyes and ears for the family. Knowing someone caring was in that room gave us something caregivers rarely get: permission to step away.

Many of his friends offered to pick him up from the hospital after treatments or take him to appointments when we weren’t available. That offer mattered more than they knew. Caregiving has a logistics problem nobody talks about — you are trying to be in multiple places, managing multiple needs, functioning on little sleep. The adrenaline becomes harder to manage than the exhaustion. So, the offer to drive him wasn’t just practical. It eased the worry.

When it became clear he would be in the hospital for New Year’s Eve, his IBEW brother showed up and decorated the room. Curly ribbons at each end of the bed, the patient board dressed in lights. He even brought candy for what we called the contraband drawer. Visitors kept it stocked. Peanut brittle, Cherry Coke, beef jerky, and those peanut butter cracker sandwiches he liked. He felt he had to hide it. They felt they had to sneak it.

That drawer was one of the most loving things I witnessed. It wasn’t about the food. It was about the conspiracy around it, the wink, the hiding, all of it mimicking his devilish personality. The idea that he could still have the comforts of home, his snack rituals, made him feel like himself, even if some days he couldn’t taste it.

Cards and letters arrived regularly, and they always mentioned Shar by name. Not as a footnote. By name. She had taken on the duty of getting the mail, and those cards were the first thing she opened with her father’s letter opener. For an adult child who had sacrificed everything to be present, those envelopes mattered. Two caregivers, mother and daughter, both grieving and both acknowledged. That was not a small thing.

Our cousin had season tickets to the 49ers, front row, thirty-yard line. The three of us had worked out a rotation, sometimes me and Al, sometimes daddy and daughter, sometimes him and his best friend Mark. The last game he was able to attend was with Mark.

When he was hospitalized, she’d transfer the tickets with one request: wear the gear and yell your hearts out. We’d watch the team parade through on their way to the tunnel and lose ourselves completely in something that had nothing to do with treatments or prognoses. We weren’t caregivers. We didn’t worry about what came next. We could just be, and that was everything.

Love showed up in many forms, and many walked with us through this season. We were supported. I was supported. But there was one person besides me who was always on duty, always on call.

The caregiving wasn’t mine alone. Shar carried it too.

She sat beside him and kept him company, accompanied him on pharmacy runs, kept the late-night vigil, made sure medications were taken when they were supposed to be taken, and had the hard conversations.

She showed up in ways I sometimes couldn’t.

She’s named after me, but we call her Shar. She is his daughter.

And she deserves her own story.

Love doesn’t always arrive the way we expect it to. If this resonates with, you’ll find more stories and reflections on caregiving, grief, and resilience in When the Music Stops, now available on Amazon.

Throughout my life, music has been more than background noise. It has been a companion, a narrator, and sometimes a teacher.

When I look back on the chapters of my life, I can often trace them to a song. Certain lyrics became anchors during difficult seasons. Certain melodies found words for emotions I couldn’t voice. Sometimes a song arrived as comfort. Other times, it arrived as a question.

While writing When the Music Stops, I realized many of the lessons in the book have a soundtrack. There are songs that remind me of caregiving, grief, guilt, resilience, friendship, hope, and purpose.

This series explores those songs and the moments they represent. Not as music reviews, but as stories about the lessons hidden within the lyrics and the ways they helped me make sense of a life not chosen.

Because sometimes the music says what we cannot.

A typical day was packed from early morning well into the night. Meetings first, east coast calls early so I could get out by noon. Then the hospital with laptop in tow, finishing the workday from a chair next to his bed. The room hummed constantly from the specialized sand bed, while monitors occupied most of the outlets, making even charging a laptop another decision in a day filled with them. Check in with the nurses. Find the doctor. Understand today’s protocol. Note what he needed for tomorrow, what the medical team needed. Drive home. Figure out dinner.

Once home, decompress with Shar and prep for tomorrow before tomorrow even arrived. I began the wind down around 11:00, pour a glass of wine, color, TV on for background noise. That was my time. When I could catch my breath. Most nights I looked forward to it. It all depended on how well the visit went.

One day a hospital visit didn’t go according to plan.

I was in post-op recovery, waiting for Al to come to after a procedure. I had my iPad, headphones and different things to occupy my time. I had downloaded a few movies, one of which was Sing 2. Before I could play the movie, the doctor entered our makeshift room. He performed some tests and essentially said that Al was paralyzed, but that it was quite possibly temporary. Too early to tell, he said, before leaving. He had come and gone before we were able to understand what he just said, let alone process the impact of what was happening. We sat with that prognosis quietly. Him staring at the ceiling. Me staring at my iPad screen.

Carry That Weight by Jennifer Hudson was the opening song.

I don’t remember the scene, but that chorus — carry that weight, carry that weight — played over and over in my mind like a pronouncement. I wasn’t sure what was ahead, but I knew we would never be the same.

There is almost always a song I can associate with the defining moments of that season. There was always a message in the music. This was the song that marked the moment I began to understand the weight we were carrying. At the time, I thought this song was speaking to a single diagnosis. Years later, I hear it differently. It was describing a season of life. The weight wasn’t one conversation. It was all of it.

It was the weight of uncertainty. The weight of making decisions without knowing the outcome. The weight of holding hope and fear at the same time. The weight of being employee, caregiver, advocate, spouse, planner, and problem-solver all at once. The weight of carrying tomorrow before today was even over.

I sat there, grateful for the mask that day. It absorbed what I couldn’t afford to show. I watched Sing 2 and cried quietly. Over the years I’d mastered the silent scream, where you hold your breath and cup your mouth so the sound never escapes; a cry born from the deep pain you only show God when you’re alone.

I finished the movie, then pulled it together before saying goodbye. I told Al I would start working on rehab facilities and I’d have my top three before his scheduled release in a few days.

I had work to do for him and on me.

Underneath the managing of the logistics and coordinating was something I wasn’t proud of. Fear. Anger. Grief for a life we had dreamed that felt like it was slipping away. I didn’t think I could handle this kind of caregiving, I didn’t want to. It wasn’t fair. And what made it worse was that he accepted the news better than I did. Aside from the moment of fear when he first heard the news, he was steady and determined. I was quietly devastated and secretly furious and feeling guilty for both. I supposed he didn’t have the luxury of anger, he had to focus on walking again. So, I carried that too.

I combed through lists, researched rehab facilities, hoping there’s space at the ones I’d chosen. Then came the next challenge. After rehab, how would he navigate? We lived in a two-story home with stairs at every turn. The house we had built our life in suddenly felt like an obstacle course. How do we make it accessible? What does it cost? How do you prepare for a new life while still praying for the old one at the same time? Our routines. Our rituals. The joy of the life we assumed we would have, was now replaced with fear and questions. I was grieving, (only I didn’t know it) managing, and managing was the only thing that kept me from succumbing to the chaos and fragility of our situation. So, I carried it and I told myself that’s what you do when you love someone.

The message hidden in that chorus felt like a premonition at the time.

Years later, I listen differently. It wasn’t warning me about the weight that was ahead. It was confirming the weight I was already carrying and reminding me that, somehow, I had been carrying it all along.

Continue the Journey

For more stories, lessons, and reflections from this journey, I invite you to pre-order your copy of When the Music Stops on Amazon.

We call it the “Down in the Valley” trip. Every year since Al passed, Kathy, Jewel, and Terry — my peeps — pack up and drive to Arizona. I have looked forward to it every year.

This year was different.

For the first time, I wasn’t arriving in Arizona simply needing a break. Although I did need one. I was arriving with something to celebrate.

After three years of writing, revising, and reliving the journey, When the Music Stops is no longer just an idea. It is available for pre-order and launches June 21^st, Father’s Day.

What makes that milestone even more meaningful is that the seed for the book was planted during our first road trip to Palm Springs. Somewhere between the pastrami tacos, late-night conversations, and hours spent talking in the pool, the idea of telling my story began to take shape.

Terry, Jewel, Kathy, and I have been friends for more than 45 years. Terry and I met in grade school. Jewel and Kathy came into my life in junior high. Later, Terry, Jewel, and I shared a college apartment. We have spent decades watching one another grow into — unapologetically — who we are.

That first trip, in 2023, was a distraction in the best possible sense. A place to set down what I was carrying, even if just for a weekend. I wasn’t fully me. I wasn’t whole. I was just grateful to be in a car with women who had known me long enough that I didn’t have to explain anything.

The music played. There was laughter. The trip did exactly what it was supposed to do. There were moments in between the laughter when I wasn’t a newly widowed woman. Moments where I forgot, briefly, what was waiting for me at home.

Looking back, that trip was the beginning of a different practice: choosing myself. Deciding that regardless of my circumstances, I was still worth showing up for. At the time, it didn’t feel like a turning point. It felt like a weekend with friends. The woman who got in that car in 2023 was still learning how to exist in a life she hadn’t chosen.

She was doing the best she could.

And her best, that year, was just saying yes.

This year was different.

I didn’t show up as a widow, a caregiver, or a woman holding it together. I was Shari. Someone who wasn’t just listening for the music again but actively seeking it. Not waiting for it to find her. Going out to meet it.

When you have spent years defined by what you were carrying, the diagnoses, the disappointments, the vigils, the loss, the rebuilding, you develop a posture. Braced. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. It becomes so familiar you stop noticing it.

Not this time.

Here is what a girls’ trip with women who knew you before the grief, through the grief, and beyond it actually does: it gives you a witness.

Someone who remembers who you were before life changed and can see who you are becoming now.

They saw it. I felt it.

The woman who got in the car this year was not the woman who got in the car in 2023. She was freer. Lighter. Present in a way that grief doesn’t allow.

Jewel said, “I was different because my expectations were different.”

She was right.

I didn’t arrive needing the trip to save me. I arrived ready to experience it. Sunday night, after dinner, face masks, and drinks, we ventured outside, and I found myself dancing around the pool with my girl Kathy, singing the Ohio Players’ I Want to Be Free, a song about walking away from a lying partner, shedding a weight that no longer belongs to you, and choosing yourself instead.

My lying partner was grief.

“One day child, I won’t have to listen to your lies

On that day, I’ll be able to make up my own mind

You know, I think I, I think I done finally realized, yes, I have

And now I think I can put you out of my life.

I said I wanna be free, child!”

My girls gave me a nickname on that trip: the New New-New. A title bestowed on the friend who shows up without reservations and relishes every moment of the adventure. I’ll take it.

You know you’ve changed because grief has loosened its grip. But when the women who’ve known you through it all celebrate that change alongside you, you see yourself through their eyes for a moment.

I was surprised to learn that the witnessing wasn’t one-sided.

As family and friends began reading advance copies of When the Music Stops, many told me they had no idea how much was happening beneath the surface. They knew pieces of the story. They lived parts of it with me. But they hadn’t seen all of it.

In sharing the journey, they gained a new perspective on what those years were like, just as I gained a new perspective on how far I’ve come.

I’ve written about what it means to keep moving after loss. About choosing, again and again, to step into what’s next. But there is something about being seen in motion, by people who loved you through the stillness, that makes the movement real in a different way.

I am not who I was in 2023.

I got to arrive at that clarity in Arizona, with my girls, on our third annual trip, with nowhere to be and nothing expected of me.

Never underestimate the power of a girls’ trip.

A therapist in therapy? The idea struck me as absolutely ridiculous but irresistible. I immediately ordered Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb.

I wasn’t looking for a book about therapy. I had never really considered it for myself, though I had no problem suggesting it to others. I had convinced myself that therapy was a cycle that fed itself. The same problems, the same conversations, going nowhere. A way of telling yourself and others that you wanted to get better without ever actually getting there. Just another industry built around self-improvement

I was wrong.

Gottlieb’s book dismantled my skepticism not by trying to prove me wrong, but by showing me something I hadn’t expected: transformation. Real transformation. In her patients, in herself. By the time I finished, I realized I hadn’t just read a book about therapy. I’d experienced something close to it.

What shifted my perspective wasn’t sentiment, but something more specific. Gottlieb writes about therapy the way a practitioner talks about their tools. The chairs in a therapist’s office aren’t random, their placement is intentional. Whether a patient chooses the couch or the chair, where they sit, how close or far they position themselves from the therapist. It all matters.

Gottlieb describes one patient in particular who never used the box of tissues that was within arm’s reach. Instead, she would reach into her bag and pull out old, used tissues, reusing them week after week.

A skilled therapist, I learned, is already reading the room before a word is spoken. Patients arrive wanting to present their best selves, which makes the therapist’s job harder. So, they watch. They notice. Everything in that space is designed to help them see what people can’t yet say.

As a Lean Six Sigma practitioner, that method and intention was the first thing that cracked my skepticism. This wasn’t random, it was structured. It was DMAIC—define why you’re here, measure the patterns, analyze what it means, improve by trying something different, and control by learning how to sustain the change.

The same discipline I’d spent years applying to broken processes and invisible inefficiencies.

Like DMAIC, therapy doesn’t just address what’s visible. Its power is in the root cause buried under layers of noise.

The framework was familiar.

We are our own jailers.

Gottlieb tells the story from the practitioner and the patient’s point of view. In one of her sessions with Wendell, her therapist, he introduced a cartoon, a prisoner frantically shaking the bars of his cell, desperate to escape, unaware that just to the side there is open space. No bars. No confinement. No lock. Just a way out he can’t see because he’s too focused on what’s in front of him.

It’s an image that stayed with her and with me.

She says that people arrive at therapy already imprisoned, in their fears, their pasts, and most insidiously, in the narratives they’ve written about themselves. And the narratives they choose are rarely kind ones. They tend to choose the ones that confirm their worst suspicions: I am unlovable, I’ll never be what I’m supposed to be, I don’t deserve good things.

Then they begin to live as if those stories are true.

For some, the fear is so overwhelming that their behavior pushes away the very people they need most. A self-fulfilling prophecy. An unconscious “I told you so”, directed inward, as if to say: thank you for proving me right.

Gottlieb has a name for it: self-sabotage, an attempt to solve a problem by creating another.

I too could identify with the prisoner. As my husband’s cancer progressed, I didn’t shake the bars. I convinced myself they weren’t there. I knew there was no cure for his cancer, but I just couldn’t accept it was terminal. Faith became a way of resisting reality, and hope, a kind of blindness. I wasn’t coping. I was avoiding.

I couldn’t see any of that in the moment. It took the distance of reflection through writing my book When the Music Stops and reading Gottlieb’s, to truly understand what I had done and what I hadn’t. And more importantly, why.

The bars are the story we keep telling. The open space was always there, but we have to be willing to see it first.

Grief doesn’t respond to control.

Loss arrives in layers and each one carries others inside it, like nesting dolls. There is the actual loss: the person, the relationship, the life you had. And beneath that, what that loss represents. Failure. Betrayal. Disappointment.

When my husband died, I told myself I couldn’t control the circumstances that caused his death but, I could control how I grieved. I was determined to hold it together, to not look like what I’d been through. To be, in every sense, the perfect widow. Composed. Functional. Fine. In those final days I made it my mission to return every call myself. I told the story three, four times a day, the same way each time, no deviation. When people fell apart, I consoled them. I let them. What they didn’t know and what I didn’t show was what it cost to relive it, over and over each time fighting to stay in character.

Avoidance is perhaps the purest form of this, a way of coping by not having to cope. For me it looked like the first fifteen minutes of every hospital visit. Updating the patient board, getting ice, organizing his table, checking for toiletries. Useful. Busy. Anywhere but present with what I couldn’t fix.

Controlling grief or any traumatic experience isn’t the same as processing it. I had watched people I knew sit with their trauma for years, the wound always present, always raw, never released. What I didn’t understand then was the difference between managing pain and processing it. Between counseling and therapy. One allows you to manage the pain closely. The other teaches you how to release it.

As Gottlieb explains it, the goal was never to eliminate the pain but to give it room to breathe. I see it like a kite on a string, still there, still connected, but at a distance. Enough to live and love freely again.

Hope and success, reconsidered.

For years I had an excuse, and it was a legitimate one. I was a mother. I worked full time. I was a full-time caregiver to my husband through his cancer and to my mom who had Alzheimer’s. My days were structured entirely around the needs of others. There was no space left for my own ambitions, my own dreams, my own definition of success. I told myself that was just the season I was in. When it was over I would get to me.

The losses didn’t come all at once, even though it sometimes felt that way. Time has a way of collapsing distance, of making what was gradual feel sudden. My husband and my mother’s passing were years apart. But his death marked a turning point. It was the moment I understood that chapter of my life was over. And because I had been so preoccupied with surviving, with caregiving, with holding everything together, I hadn’t noticed how lost I’d become. I didn’t realize it until it was just me. No one to care for. No structure to fill the hours. No role to step into. That’s when the silence arrived. And in the silence, the question I hadn’t had time to ask: who am I now?

I had hoped for a future unencumbered by illness. A life on the other side of all of it.

His death didn’t just take him, it took that future. And in taking it, it illuminated everything I hadn’t done, every project I’d quietly shelved while I waited for life to resume.

Gottlieb suggests that everyone is afraid of something. Not in the abstract, but specifically. Rejection, success, failure, hope, change, control, legacy, whether we are enough. I sat with two: success and hope. It wasn’t fear that kept me from them, I had slowly stopped believing they were available to me. Success became something I postponed until life settled down. Hope had become something I rationed carefully, afraid of what it would cost me if I spent it. I didn’t fear them. I had simply forgotten how to want them.

The power of choice.

Gottlieb draws on a quote from Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor to underscore her most important point. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It sounds simple. It is not.

Reacting is reflexive, it happens to you. Responding is chosen. It requires you to pause inside that space and decide.

In this season of my life, I’ve come to know that space as the sacred pause. What I’ve noticed in talking to people who’ve experienced deep loss, whose lives changed without warning, is that the pause doesn’t allow you to be comfortable. It asks you to be intentional. The people who sit inside it don’t just endure change. They build something from it.

My grief needed a place to go. Writing gave it one. Looking back on the critical moments — the happy ones, the dark ones — they all found a place in my story. When the Music Stops became my space between stimulus and response.

It wasn’t therapy. But it was therapeutic.

Which is perhaps what Frankl understood better than anyone. Freedom isn’t the absence of suffering. It’s what you choose to believe and do inside it.

A future not yet in focus.

Gottlieb describes something therapists do that I can only call an act of grace. When a patient cannot yet imagine their own healing, when hope feels too dangerous or too distant to hold, the therapist holds it for them. They carry a vision of who that person could become, a “blurry snapshot of a future the patient can’t yet see.” They sit with people in the wreckage not to fix it, but to witness it.

How much better would the world be if we recognized the blurriness in other people? Acknowledging that none of us are the best version of ourselves at all times, and that life gives us moments to see people as we would hope they see us, extending grace, and meeting them with understanding, even in the middle of their circumstances.

You can’t change what they’re going through. But you can choose how you see them.

This, I came to understand, is what therapy really is: not a cycle that feeds itself, but a witnessed transformation. Gottlieb says the industry term when that transformation is complete is “termination.” Not an ending in the tragic sense, but an arrival. The work is done. The patient is ready. It’s like a butterfly. One season must end completely before another can begin. The caterpillar doesn’t partially transform. It surrenders entirely to the process.

That kind of surrender, I’ve come to believe, is how healing works. I have accepted the termination of my old life, not because I chose it, but because it marked the beginning of living differently.

Gottlieb writes that pain does, in fact, abate. I am living proof that she was right.

A book I picked up because the title made me laugh ended up showing me that therapy is, at its core, a process. One that mirrors the discipline I knew: naming what hurts, noticing what repeats, making meaning of it, and learning, over time, how to carry the change. Slowly, and eventually, it leads to transformation.

Maybe you should talk to someone. And if you’re not ready for that, the book is a great place to start.

In 1991, I cancelled a date twice. Once because a friend suddenly lost her mother. The second time, my sister had a house fire that left her and my nieces homeless. The third time he asked, I said yes. I had no way of knowing that saying yes to a guy who simply wanted to take me out for my birthday would lead me here. To this book, to this life, to everything that came after.

When the Music Stops is a guide for women inside the disruption, written by someone who survived it.

It’s about continuing to be faithful and diligent, to care for someone through a terminal cancer diagnosis. The trials. The treatments. New drug offerings. Each one felt like another seat of opportunity, as we continued to qualify for the next round of hope.

Progression. Remission. Starts and stops. It all began to feel like musical chairs.

The game of musical chairs is random, dynamic, and unpredictable — much like cancer. Every player competes against the clock and the one controlling the music. The controller sets the pace, and only the controller knows when the music will stop.

In the early rounds, players move cautiously, testing the timing and pace of the game is part of the strategy. But as the game progresses, the pace changes. Chairs are removed, rounds are shortened, and each turn represents both the hope and fear, the battles won and lost.

When you survive the first few rounds, you celebrate. You remain grateful to still be in the game, hoping you’ll always have a seat.

And then one day, you don’t.

The music stops and suddenly you’re left standing alone, without a seat, like the loser in the game of musical chairs. And no instruction for what to do next.

That’s the part in widowhood we rarely talk about honestly. We talk about grief. We talk about mourning. But we don’t talk enough about the aftermath, the legalities, the financial decisions you never imagined you’d have to make alone or the exhaustion that comes from grieving while the world still expects you to function.

Wife and caregiver, identity and purpose, interconnected so much so that when the wife and caregiver roles end, so does your sense of self.

The strange, necessary, painful work is figuring out who you are when the person you built your entire life with is gone.

The we, that becomes I, and the rituals you shared no longer apply. The hidden costs of loss no one prepares you for.

When the music stopped, writing became the roadmap I never had. Getting the words on the page gave grief a place to go. And somewhere in that process, I slowly learned to listen for the music again.

When the Music Stops is the book I wish I had.

Not a grief manual. Not a self-help prescription. But a candid, honest companion for the woman inside the disruption, loss, or a life she never imagined she would be expected to survive.

That’s why I wrote this.

And if this is where you are, or where someone you love has been, it was written for you.

When the Music Stops is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Answering “how are you?” without pause. Staying useful to everyone around me so no one would question my answer. It worked. My performance was so convincing, the people that cared stopped asking out of consideration.

You see, I was the one who had all the answers. I had time to help everyone process their grief, they could count on me to lean in, listen, and offer something. I could show up for everyone else. I chose not to for myself. Professionally, I had mastered the art of delegation. Personally, I delegated very little. I planned and coordinated the service, the timing, the ceremony, the decorations, all of it.

I showed up with spreadsheets, directions, creating order when everything around me was anything but. That was the costume. Competence. Composure. The woman who had it together, so no one had to worry about her.

It worked on most people. My pastors always knew though. They had walked with enough families through seasons to recognize grief masquerading as confidence. And they had known us long enough to know the difference between what we were projecting and what we were actually carrying. After church they would give us a hug, holding Shar and I close before we could even say “good morning pastor.” They didn’t ask how are you doing, but something more specific: what can I pray for?

We’d say we were fine. Or we’d ask for something safe: strength, peace. To be clear, we needed those too, but there were things we needed more and never said out loud. We needed rest. We needed financial relief. We needed reassurance that life would eventually feel like life again. I needed someone to sit with me and let me say all the not-so lady-like things widows think but rarely say out loud. You keep these inside because others are watching, and they take their cue from you.

I kept those between me and God.

I believed, and still do, that if I was not fine, there would be damage I couldn’t undo. My falling apart would set off a chain reaction I wasn’t willing to start, and it would create a domino effect across generations of women in my family. So, I held it. I performed. I wasn’t only trying to convince them. I was trying to convince myself too.

I was raised that way. I learned from my mom, she from hers, and I’ve passed this down to my daughters as well. This is not a brag, it’s just a fact. What came with that inheritance was a standard, you may fall apart at home, but outside those walls you were always a lady. Composure wasn’t optional. It was expected.

But what I was doing wasn’t composure anymore. And it wasn’t privacy either.

Privacy is a choice made on your own terms what you share, when, and with whom. The performance was something else entirely. Every decision about what to reveal was made based on what I believed others could handle. Not what I needed. What they could bear.

Maintaining the image gave me the illusion of control. I could manage what they saw. And it worked, in the way a fence works, it keeps things in as much as it keeps things out. The unintended consequence was that I was alone with it. There were moments I felt I was the only person in the world who knew what it was like to grieve a husband. Despite being surrounded by people, it kept everyone at a distance.

Every morning, I put the armor back on. What once felt protective was now draining me. I was so busy staying busy that I was getting lost in the motion of it all. I was, in essence, project managing my grief instead of processing it. I was holding on so tightly to composure that I avoided the very thing I needed in order to heal.

You can’t receive what you won’t let yourself feel.

Eventually, I had to admit the act was keeping me from the very things I needed most: connection, support, healing. I decided to let the performance go and trust that people could handle the version of me underneath it. That decision is how this newsletter came to be and why I wrote When the Music Stops.

If you recognized yourself anywhere in this, When the Music Stops is for you. It’s the full story of the performance, what it cost, and how I finally learned to put it down. Kindle available now. Paperback releases June 21.

A trip to Vegas with my oldest daughter, a weekend away, a change of scenery after COVID. I didn’t know then that it would become a tradition of escaping with my daughters. I just knew I didn’t want to celebrate at home.

The next year, Shar and I went to Greece.

The year after that, she thought about Disneyland. I planned Santa Barbara.

It was only a few hours away, a road trip distance. That mattered. Al loved road trips. There was something about the deliberateness of them, the way passing mile markers gave you time to arrive mentally before you got there physically. So, we decided to take one. Not to mourn him. To honor him.

I booked the room and researched restaurants and activities. Shar planned the route. She loved to drive. She got that from her dad. And like her dad she needed her music, snacks and the route mapped. Once she had those three things she was good to go.

The coastal drive was gorgeous. About midway, we decided to stop in King City, and grab lunch. I checked Yelp and found Cork and Plough, 4.5 stars a “popular American restaurant and wine bar” located in the town square. The reviews were solid. We were excited to try something new.

That excitement slowly turned to panic when it looked like the GPS had given up on us. We had veered off course. We could no longer see the coast. For a moment, we considered turning back, but instead, decided to stick it out. We were up for an adventure.

Eventually, we found it in the center of town. We ordered the Pork and Cow Burger, pulled pork piled high on top of a burger patty, one of their most popular dishes. And yes, it was worth taking the road less traveled.

Back on the road, happy and full, we were glad we hadn’t turned around.

Shar and I needed to get away, to put some distance between us and the weight of it all, to find unfamiliar space to process it. We knew we couldn’t outrun it, but for those four days, it felt like we had.

The morning after we arrived, I booked a mother-daughter perfume-making experience in Buellton, an hour north of Santa Barbara. There were four mother and daughter duos, all of us new to the craft. At the time I didn’t think much about the significance. I just thought it would be fun, and we’d have a unique memento of our trip. My husband wore the kind of cologne that lingered, there were parts of the house that still smelled like him. Now just a few months later we spent a morning in a plant nursery intentionally creating a new scent. A new memory.

Two hours later we each had our own signature fragrance, and we were headed to Solvang a quaint Danish village.

It was exactly like you’d expect windmills, the infamous cookies, and old-world charm. A small town situated in California that looked like California had left it behind. What we didn’t expect was the Mexican food, authentic and unforgettable. We dined at a colorful open-air restaurant along the main street, a place that felt more like a small city in Mexico than a Danish village.

We spent the next couple of days enjoying the local sights before heading home, with a stop at Hearst Castle. It wasn’t as opulent as today’s standards, but I could see the draw back in the day. It had an old Hollywood glamour that reminded me of the parties Gatsby would have thrown. As the tour bus traveled through the expansive grounds, horses grazed in the distance while a working cattle ranch stretched beyond the hills. I found myself thinking, this is the kind of trip the Gemini Crew would have taken.

I missed our Corvette family. I had already sent them postcards before leaving Santa Barbara. Shar and I were touring the coast not in the Corvette but in the Camaro. And what I remember most about that trip isn’t just where we went, but how we carried each other through it. We didn’t talk about how we got here or what came next.

We just enjoyed the sights, the smells, and the taste of adventure. We didn’t look back.

What started as a way to get away became a tradition. From 2021 to 2025, we kept going, first after COVID, then through grief. In 2024, it was Arizona. In 2025, North Carolina. Five years of needing to go.

In 2026, I didn’t plan a trip, and the fact that I didn’t feel the need to, I think, says something.

Pictures of Carnival, in full color, people dressed in vibrant costumes, captured something I had always wanted to experience someday. Those images lived on a vision board in my office, a manifestation of passion and joy. For over four years, they remained just that… until they became real.

When I was invited on a girl’s trip to Panama, I said yes.

Soon after, the three of us connected through a group chat to coordinate flight plans, transportation and itineraries. We were all based in Seattle but traveling separately. One of the women was finishing a business trip in Dallas and flying through Houston for the final leg to Tocumen International Airport. I was also connecting through Houston, we were booked on the same flight.

My inbound flight was late. By the time I reached the departure gate, boarding had already begun. The area was crowded, with multiple lines spilling into the adjacent gate. Up until that point, I only had a phone relationship with her. I knew what she sounded like not what she looked like. I scanned the crowd, searching for the person that resembled that thumbnail contact photo I had in my phone.

We weren’t seated together, but I still wanted to meet her before boarding so we could go through customs together as my hotel reservation was under her name. I needed to find her.

So I did what they do in those detective shows, I called her number to see whose phone would ring. The woman standing right in front of me answered. We laughed, then hugged, both realizing we had been standing next to each other the entire time, quietly searching for one another. We struck up a conversation and kept talking until our group was called.

That’s how my week in Panama began.

I had taken girl’s trips before with family, and lifelong friends. But this was different. One woman I had just met and the other I knew through my daughter. This was my first trip with women who would become my friends.

New friendships offer something legacy friendships can’t. The women who’ve known you the longest know every version of you and every version that came before. But these women only knew who I was now. The woman who was learning to live with intention, beginning to listen for the music again after losing her husband. The woman who was searching for her local tribe.

Carnival blanketed Valentine’s Day and having arrived the night before, it caught us off guard, it was our first full day. We hadn’t included that in our itinerary or made dinner reservations. Earlier, the concierge offered to help, but it didn’t register until we found ourselves facing late bookings or no availability at all. We returned to the front desk and took him up on his offer. A quick phone call later, we had a table.

That evening, we found ourselves at a beautiful restaurant, dining al fresco on the back patio. When the drinks came, we toasted to our week and to Galentine’s Day.

I had never celebrated a Galentine’s Day. Not once. There had always been a Valentine. And then there wasn’t. In the years that followed, I survived February more than I celebrated it.

But that night in Panama, at a table I hadn’t reserved, with women I was still getting to know, I didn’t survive it. I celebrated it.

Panama’s Carnival wasn’t like anything I had imagined. It wasn’t fancy or expensive. It was a joyful street festival alive with music, and food. After spending the day in the streets of Panama City, we cleaned up and made our way to an indoor festival filled with more food and live music.

People came from all over to dance, to sing, and to share in the celebration. Young and old, across generations, partied together for hours, like one big family. The entire city practically shut down to take part.

The call and response, the deep rhythm of the drums, it was impossible not to join in. I made my way from the vendors to the main hall to find my friends and dance. The artists were dancing across the stage in the very same costumes that had lived on my vision board for years.

The lead singer moved from the stage into the crowd, pulling people in. And my friend—the one I had found by calling her number at the gate—ended up leading the conga line.

I danced in place, filming my friend, taking it all in.

I was finally living it.

In the days that followed, after sightseeing and dinner, we gathered in the reception area just off from the lobby, a small space that shared the hotel bar. They served light snacks, desserts and a selection off coffees and teas, making it easy to unwind before heading upstairs. In the corner, away from the bar, sofas and small tables were arranged for conversation, inviting you to sit and stay awhile.

We talked about our day. Then we talked about what was next, professionally and personally. They shared how much they needed this time away, how demanding work had been leading up to the trip. At times, they stepped away briefly to take calls or log on, trying to stay ahead of what would be waiting for them when they returned. When it came to me, I kept it simple. I said work hadn’t been too busy.

They didn’t know I had just been laid off. At the time, it didn’t feel relevant, so I kept it to myself.

As the night went on, our conversation shifted. They shared their experiences navigating the Seattle dating scene and I offered what little I knew. Most nights, we ended our days talking about life, acknowledging how short it is, reminding each other to take care of ourselves, to make the most of the time we’re given. We were all different: one born and raised in Seattle, one from North Carolina, and me from California. Different ages, different stages of life.

And yet, I was surprised by how much we had in common. Each of us, in our own way, was learning to make space for what comes next.

I was learning that dreams can still come true even when they look different than you planned. You just have to be open to them. I had placed those images on my board imagining I would be standing inside them with my husband. I didn’t know then that losing him would be the catalyst for claiming them. That the dream wouldn’t disappear — it would just become something else.

Nevertheless, I said yes to a trip I hadn’t planned, with women I barely knew.

And somewhere between the conversations and the laughter, I found exactly what I had been searching for.

A tribe.

Unlike I Knew I Had to Go, there was no prompting. No small inner voice telling me it was time. My morning started like any other, until it didn’t.

I logged on and was denied access. My first thought was the system. It happens. I reached out to IT. No answer. I reached out to my boss and left a message. I should have known something was wrong when she called me right back. She rarely does.

“There’s something going on with the system,” I said. “Do you have another contact for IT? I can’t get in.”

“Yeah,” she said. “About that. Hold on.”

The next voice I heard was my HRBP. That’s when I knew it wasn’t the system.

She was matter of fact. Professional. She ran through her script — the kind you know they’re required to say but couldn’t care less about. You’re not really listening anyway because you’re too busy focusing on the impact of what they’re saying, waiting to hear what the payout will be.

And then it was over.

Twenty-five years. Reduced to a generic talk track and one week of severance. It ended almost as quickly as it had started.

I had survived RIFs, bankruptcy, and various restructuring initiatives. I had sat in rooms where those decisions were made, argued in support of and against budget cuts, watched colleagues disappear from the org chart one by one. I knew firsthand how these things worked.

So, it wasn’t entirely a surprise I made the list. There were very few veterans left. I called a few colleagues. I wanted them to hear it from me first. My last call was a member of my team. He and I had worked on several projects over the past couple of years but had known each other for over ten.

I told him it was my last day and how it all played out.

He said, “I want to share something with you. Do you remember the movie Waterworld, starring Kevin Costner?”

Yes, I do.

“Do you remember the old guy? There’s a scene I’ve never forgotten.” And he walked me through it.

An older man, relegated to the hull of the ship, sits in darkness around the clock. His only job is to gauge how much oil is left. He lives in the bowels of muck — grueling, unseen work, day after day.

One day, with everything closing in, Costner’s character threatens to blow the boat up and end it all. When he opens the hatch, light floods the darkness. The old man looks up, recognizes what’s about to happen, and before the flame reaches him, he says —

“Oh, thank God.”

We wrapped up the conversation and said our goodbyes.

After the calls, after the conversations, it hit me. I was no longer employed.

This wasn’t my first time. In January 2021, I’d gotten a similar call. The reason then was pandemic related, something about covid having affected business. You remember the line. Unprecedented times. That time I was in shock. Al’s numbers were rising and the cancer was advancing. It was a scary time to be without a job. We had a trip planned with the Gemini Crew, we’d be on the road nearly three weeks, making our way through the Southwest. I didn’t know how we were going to manage. I didn’t know what I would do when we got back.

This time was different. There was disappointment, a little uncertainty about the unknown, but not all-out fear. I had been down this road before.

I kept going. I kept moving. I did what I always do before a trip, got my hair done, manicure and pedicure, picked up last minute essentials. Sunscreen, bug repellent, a waterproof bag for Carnival. The plans didn’t change because I didn’t change. I boarded the plane and left it all behind. All of it could wait until I got back.

I was headed to Panama on what was to be my last day of work, Friday the 13^th. That morning waiting to board, I opened the Bible app. The devotion for the day was called He Saved You. It opens with the story of Air Florida Flight 90. Shortly after takeoff from DC the plane crashed into the Potomac. The story goes on to say how the helicopter hovered over the river and repeatedly let down its line with a life belt attached for those survivors to clip and be hoisted to safety. What stayed with me most was the image of the lifeline being extended. People being pulled out of the disaster. I’ve come to expect this, the way the devotion seems written just for me, just for that morning.

Every morning on that trip, before I scrolled my phone, before the TV, before the coffee, I sat up in bed and read. It was the same practice I kept at home, before the demands of the day could distract me. Every evening before heading to our rooms, we’d agree on a time to meet downstairs for breakfast. Each morning, I padded it. Twenty minutes allotted and protected, before I hit the floor.

Panama was quieter than home. No cars idling to warm up for work. No neighbors out walking their dogs. And despite the three-hour time change, my body adjusted. It kept the rhythm without being asked.

My first morning after arrival, God Works for Your Good. Then The Highs and Lows of Life. Put First Things First. Sharpen Your Conscience.

All week, as if on cue.

I started each morning without worry or fear. I enjoyed this vacation the same way I had every other. In those quiet hours, before the hotel guests started their day, I came to understand what my friend and that man in the hull already knew.

This wasn’t an ending. It was a release. It was a blessing.

I was given an opportunity to define what work would look like for me. To decide what I would toil for, day in and day out. I get to choose.

I filed my unemployment claim from the comfort of my bed at the Renaissance. Returned home, finalized my book, When the Music Stops and chose the artwork for the cover. Then I mapped out the space I would step into next, the structure, the voice, the rhythm of my Substack.

They made me go.

But I decided what to become.

My husband, Al, was known for his big, wide grin, always shining beneath the brim of whatever hat he wore, an IBEW cap, a Corvette hat, or sometimes a Stetson. No matter the style, his smile was warm, the kind you couldn’t help but smile back.

On Sundays, he’d get to church at least thirty minutes early, place his Bible on the last seat of the fifth row, and then start working the sanctuary, engaging in conversation before service. The unofficial greeter.

When you lose someone like that, people feel the need to say something. But anyone who’s lost a husband knows…they should think before they speak.

Every. Single. Sunday. Without fail, a woman at church would find me and wrap her arms around me, look me in the eye with her mournful eyes and open her mouth and say,

“You’re living my worst nightmare. I don’t know what I’d do without my husband.”

I’d smile, secretly thinking you don’t know how close I am to laying hands on you right now in the house of the Lord. Shar was just behind me. Watching. Smiling her own tight smile. By the third or fourth time, she’d had enough. She said,

“Mom. She’s got one more time. One more time and I’ma let her know.” She is her father’s child.

“He gives the best hugs.”

Present tense. Like Al was still here.

He did indeed. And you must be the one he was cussing and fussing about, always getting foundation on his Tommy Bahama shirts.

“I’m going to miss him.”

If you were someone I’d seen a few times, in the fellowship hall after Sunday service and I didn’t know you, maybe keep it to yourself. Or tell someone else.

Because now I’m comforting you. I’m nodding and saying, “Mmhmm. I know, I know” and holding your hand. And just like that, I become the grief counselor by default, stepping out of my own grief to tend to someone else’s.

“It’s not the same but…”

No. It most definitely isn’t.

I understand what people are reaching for. They want to say I know loss too, I’ve experienced “grief.”

Grief isn’t interchangeable. Losing a parent, a friend, a family member, those are real losses. Painful and deserving of their own acknowledgment.

But losing your husband, the person who you shared a life and a future with, is something else entirely. And the moment you say “but”, you already know.

“Do you know what you’re gonna do? Are you going to move?”

These two arrived in tandem, within weeks of the funeral, then as monthly follow-ups.

Grief doesn’t come with a business plan. You don’t magically figure it out between the condolence cards and a new normal no one warned you about.

And yet, people seemed to believe there was a pot of gold waiting at the end of a very long, very dark rainbow, as if death hands you a better life.

Long-term planning is not on the agenda. Make it through tomorrow without losing my mind is.

“I don’t know how you do it. I would be a total wreck.”

I felt like saying, me neither dumb ass, respectfully. There is no manual. Nothing online that explains the precise steps for navigating the loss of your husband while still remembering to pay bills, return phone calls, and cancel subscriptions, and figure out how to live without him.

But I am deeply curious about this “total wreck” they speak of.

“What kind of cancer did he have? Multiple Myeloma. “Oh, I’m not familiar with that one.”

So, we needed a more recognizable cancer. One that comes with better name recognition. A cancer with a publicist perhaps.

Another instance where I just smiled. Sometimes I wore that smile all day, by the time I got home, my cheeks hurt from holding it in place.

“So and so died of that too, a few years back. But they were younger than your husband.”

I wasn’t aware cancer had an age requirement. Are you telling me that because he was older his death comes with a lower level of tragedy? As if to imply he cheated death.

I am a woman of considerable restraint.

“My mom’s been a widow for over 20 years.”

I’m still not sure what to do with that one. Was it a warning? A roadmap? A prophecy? It’s the quiet assumption underneath that statement, for me. That this is now my path too. Twenty years, alone, widowhood as a permanent identity and a life sentence served with grace, not I Lord willing.

I saved the best one for last.

“Did you think about therapy?”

Blank stare.

That’s all I had. A complete and total suspension of facial expression, except for a few blinks, while my brain attempted to process the question.

First of all, do I look like I need therapy? Don’t answer that. Second are you offering? Third who are you that I should tell?

Yes, people say the wrong things because they don’t know what to say. I’m sure I’ve done it too. They loved him, and grief made them reach for words that didn’t quite fit. Words trying to fill a space they couldn’t.

But there were also plenty of people who said exactly the right things, who showed up in ways I never could have imagined. Those who sent a simple “thinking of you” note, or sat with me in silence, on the days when words were too much.

And for the record, my future, whatever it looks like, whatever timeline it follows, whatever path it takes — is mine.

Not a template. Not a tradition. And damn sure not someone else’s mother’s story.

For everyone who asked what I was going to do, I finally moved.

I held on to his collection of cowboy boots and his dress hats. The Panamas, Stetsons, the fedoras. Packed neatly in boot bags and hat boxes, stored in plastic bins. Even though I changed zip codes, parts of him came with me.

What did people say to you when you were grieving? Share them in the comments. I know I’m not the only one who had thoughts.

I remember watching an episode of 9-1-1: Nashville, and one of their dispatch operators who had lost her husband still called his phone each night, just to hear his voice and tell him about her day. A practice she continued for three years.

I could relate to her, as I have a few of my own.

My Phone

My phone is never off. Never on do not disturb. Rarely silenced. If it isn’t in bed with me, it’s on the nightstand within arm’s reach. Close enough that I could grab it in the dark without thinking.

This started when my husband was hospitalized. I kept it close because I wanted to be available, always. There were times when he couldn’t sleep and just wanted to talk himself to sleep, or the medical team needed to communicate a change in his regimen or status. Because of this, I trained myself to be reachable at any hour. I learned to sleep lightly, ready to respond at any moment.

Long after the crisis has passed, I sleep the same way.

I still wake up sometimes at three in the morning and reach for it before I’m even fully awake. My body moves before my mind remembers.

And in the space between reaching and remembering, something else arrives. Fear. A new understanding. I live in a world where the worst can happen, because it did. The vigil didn’t end, it only shifted. Now I sleep lightly for everyone I love, holding the possibility of another call, another emergency, another moment that changes everything.

And so, I reach for it even if there’s no reason to. It’s an instinct.

My Pillows

We’ve always had a lot of pillows on the bed for decoration, but mostly for comfort and to support my husband’s back. Last count there were seventeen, including two sets of sleeping pillows, firm and soft, the euro and standard shams, and the decorator pillows. The pillows that once adorned the bed have become something else entirely. They no longer decorate they protect.

I used to take the pillows off the bed and stack them atop the dresser. Somewhere along the way the new placement became the norm and the pillows became a buffer.

They keep me safely on my side of the bed, giving me the impression there is still someone on the other side. They are close enough that I can feel them. They are high enough that I can’t see over them.

They hold the shape of what was there, even when nothing is.

Not seeing an empty bed is reassuring, allowing me to sleep a little more soundly, even if it is only for a few hours.

My Side

Wherever I sleep, in a hotel, at a friend’s, or with family, I arrange the pillows the same way and take the right side of the bed. My side. The right side of the bed has been my place for over thirty years. Sometimes I get in bed and deliberately scoot to the middle, stretch out taking up more room than I’ve ever allowed myself before. But when I wake up, I’m always back on the right side.

Even if I’ve fallen asleep in the middle, I can tell I didn’t stay there long. The other side of the bed looks undisturbed. Neat. As though no one slept there.

I only need to straighten and tuck the sheets on one side. My side.

We used to make the bed together, each of us taking a side, meeting in the middle at the foot of the bed. Now there is only one side to tend to.

Each night, my nighttime ritual begins the same way.

I set the pillows in place and check to make sure my phone is within arm’s reach before I turn off the light on the nightstand. Satisfied, I snuggle into my spot and pull the covers up.

I close my eyes and exhale.

Easter was always a big deal for the Thompson family because we made it so, and because the only time we had Egg Pie was Easter morning.

Egg Pie became a tradition because we needed something hearty and quick, minimal prep, that wouldn’t tie up the oven too long. We always attended early service to avoid the crowds and make space for families with guests in town and for those who only came to church on Easter. Getting up that early left no time for a snack or coffee, so when we got home, everyone was starving, waiting for the Egg Pie. Al and Shar knew it would be a while before dinner was ready, even with prep done the day before.

So, while the roast was being prepared, a beef tenderloin with a rosemary and fennel crust, Shar’s favorite, the Egg Pie was already in the oven. Hashbrowns on the bottom, a layer of maple bacon and crumbled sausage, egg custard poured over the top, finished with cheese. It was the bridge between church and dinner, the thing that kept hunger at bay while the main attraction, with all the trimmings, was being prepared.

Easter 2023 arrived nine days after the final goodbye. I knew the family couldn’t make the trip back so soon and Shar and I couldn’t get to them. We did what we could. We kept the ritual that was ours to keep: we went to church.

I still remember that morning even though it was three years ago. It was the first time I walked into that building as a widow, into a gathering of people who all knew what had happened. When we came through the doors, everyone was loving. They met us with open arms and warm words. But I could see it on their faces, the grief and sympathy they were holding on our behalf.

After the service, the church had arranged for a chicken and waffle truck, and it was exactly what I needed. I hadn’t thought about the Egg Pie. I hadn’t thought about the big meal with all the fixins’, as Al used to say. We were still in the keep-moving, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other phase. We made it to church, and that was the whole plan.

That was then. This is now.

Easter 2026. I’m going back to the Bay, and even as I write that, it feels a little strange. Going back to the place I used to call home to celebrate a holiday and start building new traditions, new memories.

Shar and I are gathering at my cousin Rho’s, short for Rhoda. She has lost her mother, her father, fiancée, and most recently her brother. Rho knows exactly what holidays feel like without the people who used to fill them, and she has decided to host anyway. Her approach was classic Rho: “I’ll make a roast, ham and maybe some mashed potatoes. You guys can bring a side, dessert or whatnot.” Okay, cool.

I pulled out my collection of cookbooks, magazines, and recipes cut from the backs of boxes and jars, a catalog built over twenty years. I started thumbing through, page by page, searching for just the right dessert. Something that wouldn’t require new bakeware or a long list of ingredients. I am a baker. Shar is not. That’s not to say she doesn’t bake, but if I’m making anything beyond a sheet cake or cookies, a trip to HomeGoods is required.

I called Shar to get her opinion. She’s practical in the best way. She knows what travels well, what will be well received, and most importantly, what will taste the best given our conditions. We agreed on broccoli salad for the side. It checked every box: no special dishes, travels well, and tastes even better the next day. Shar could easily work the leftovers into meals the following week.

Later that week, I was still deciding on dessert when I got a text from Shar: “Did you check the thread?” The three of us had our own group chat, the place where we shared everyday life and debated the best shows across every streaming platform. Before I could even open it, she followed up: “Rho skipped over the broccoli salad and said you have to bring sweet potato cheesecake.”

I had made one last Christmas. Shar hosted her first Christmas dinner, and sweet potato cheesecake made it onto the menu alongside the roast. Rho shared the menu with her friends, and apparently one of them was still talking about not getting a slice. So, I was volun-told to bring it again.

So much of what we did as a family involved food, gathering around the table. Those traditions and rituals become the memories you carry long after someone is gone, and you want to hold on to them. I’ve found that to do that, you sometimes have to adapt, sometimes create new ones, but always find ways to honor those memories.

Egg Pie is synonymous with Easter morning, and it has been a staple in the Thompson household for over a decade. Shar has her own place now. She’s the master chef of her kitchen. She has the recipe and could make it whenever she wants. She doesn’t have to wait for Easter. But she does. She believes, it’s always better when Mom makes it. So, I’m making it, and happy to do so. I’ll cut the recipe in half, still keeping the tradition intact. Two people don’t need a full 9x13. We’ll go to early service, come home to Egg Pie just the two of us, the familiar smell filling the kitchen again before we head over to Rho’s for dinner.

Easter will look different this year, and I must say, I’m looking forward to it. The surroundings, the faces, the menu, all of it has changed. But some things don’t. Love. Family. Church. And Egg Pie.

The family had come to support my granddaughter’s fundraiser. We were sitting at our table, making conversation while we waited for the meal and the show to begin.

I had never lived alone. I went from daughter to roommate to wife to mother. There had always been someone.

She started sharing her list before I could answer. I suspected they were things she wished were true for her— small, specific things. She’s married. She was half joking. Mostly she wasn’t.

She said, “ Whatever you leave is exactly where you left it.”

As soon as she said it, I thought, exactly. Nobody moved it. Nobody needed it. Nobody decided it belonged somewhere else.

I offered a few of my own. We nodded. We laughed at the recognition.

I drove home still thinking about it, and somewhere between the venue and the garage, the list started to take shape.

Here’s what I came up with.

If something is lost, it really is your fault.

You can keep the house as cool or as warm as you like. The thermostat is yours. No negotiation required.

The last of something in the fridge is never a surprise. You’re the only one who could’ve eaten it. If it’s gone, it’s already on the list.

Ice cream and wine is a perfectly valid dinner. Nobody is judging your plate but you.

No picky eaters. No allergies. No complaints. Everything in the fridge is something you actually like.

Your money is actually your money. No explaining the shoes. No justifying the kitchen gadget that seemed unnecessary to someone who wasn’t going to use it anyway. You spend, you save, you decide.

You clean when you’re ready. Not because someone else’s threshold for disorder is lower or higher than yours.

You know exactly how much time it takes to get ready. You’re never waiting on someone else to jump in the shower first.

I show up on time — I’m not dependent on anyone else. Being late was never my distinction. That always belonged to my husband.

There’s only one calendar to coordinate. Your time belongs to you in a way it probably hasn’t in years. Maybe ever.

She asked me how I was adjusting.

The honest answer? Better than I expected.

Still, some of it catches me off guard. The quiet, the stillness, the absence of someone else moving through the house. Not in the ways I thought it would.

Turns out, I adjust well.

For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have keys.

Not house keys. Not mailbox keys. Not car keys. Nothing. I was stranded between the place I had called home for more than twenty years in California and the new home I had not yet secured in Washington. I had no door to unlock, no space to return to.

Shari, you’re homeless, I thought to myself.

It took conscious effort to push back against that thought, to reframe it.

“You’re not homeless. You’re in transition. You’re in limbo,” I’d say to myself.

But limbo, I was learning, was a necessary holding pattern.

Two years after losing Al, I left California.

I knew I had to go, even before I had everything figured out. I had spent those two years trying to come to terms with my present reality, living inside the space we had shared, trying to make it mine. The memories were in every nook and corner, in pieces of furniture, every room, they held a piece of him. I knew I would never fully process the grief inside those walls. Healing, for me, meant leaving.

It meant listening to that still, sometimes loud voice that whispered, it’s okay. You can carry him with you. But it’s time to move.

I remember the excitement of our family unloading the U-Haul years ago, making several trips. We were a family of three working well into the night to complete the move in one day and minimize the costs.

This time I wasn’t so worried about the cost as I was worried about what I was leaving behind.

I watched a junk removal service drive away with all the things I chose not to bring, the kind of things you’d expect a family to have in a 2,000 square -foot home. Then a separate team loaded what remained into a Bekins truck.

I had packed for one.

Physically releasing the weight of a shared life was its own kind of ceremony. Not easy. But necessary.

The logistics of starting over did not unfold gracefully, and I would soon learn the true meaning of limbo.

The condo I was slated to close on fell through after I had already scheduled the movers and placed deposits. While in limbo I was slated to work in Detroit, then return to California for my brother-in-law’s homegoing celebration.

I stayed with my daughter and son-in-law in Washington while the truck made its way up the coast. I had twenty days to secure a permanent address. Work travel and a family funeral cut that time in half.

I returned during Easter week with ten days left to find a place, ten days that included Easter weekend while simultaneously finalizing the manuscript for When the Music Stops.

I was running out of time and still hadn’t received an approval. The background check was delayed, and so was I. I toured one last unit, submitted my application on Good Friday along with another $300 application fee, and waited.

If no one said yes by Tuesday, I would be out of $600, and the movers would offload everything into a Bekin storage unit, an extra $1,800 I hadn’t planned for.

The approval came, Saturday morning.

I completed the paperwork, paid my first month’s rent, and picked up the keys Monday afternoon. The movers arrived first light Tuesday morning. I was there just ahead of them to unlock my new place.

I had managed to pull it off.

I watched them carry it all in. The space smaller than I expected, fuller than I had planned. Even after downsizing considerably, what I had chosen to keep seemed to overwhelm the 1,000 square feet I was now calling home. I unpacked only what I needed at first. Work kept me traveling, giving me a convenient excuse to delay what remained.

I placed things where they belonged. And then I did something I hadn’t done since college. I designed a space entirely on my own terms.

No consensus.

No practical compromises on color or style. For the first time, I dreamed in color, slowly at first, then with intention. I played with hues of green, shades of brown and blue. I purchased a vanilla linen couch to anchor the room. Everything carefully chosen. Every corner a quiet reflection of who I am. From the softness of the colors to the weight of the furniture, from the artwork on the walls to the flickering candles, each piece holds a decision. A choosing.

As the pieces of my space fall into place, so did the pieces of my life.

This new life, the freedom of it, the beauty of it was a byproduct of loss.

And that brought conflict.

How do you feel grateful for a door that opened only because another one closed forever? How do you live with expectant hope without being disloyal to the past or blaming the past? Those were questions I couldn’t answer, so I stopped trying to resolve them. I stopped trying to justify my hope. Instead, I sat with the uncertainty and discovered that uncertainty isn’t the absence of hope. It’s the presence of possibility.

Deep down I knew that everything I had been through, every disruption, and every delay, had led me here. Not as punishment. Not by accident.

The past did not need to be blamed for the future to be embraced. Moving forward didn’t require its permission.

I have wrestled — and still do — with the mixed feelings and the mixed blessings. But I chose to stop living in the what-ifs and begin living in the even-ifs.

There was a prompting to move, and I honored it. Call it faith. Call it healing. Call it obedience.

I am exactly where I need to be.

And that’s the peace I didn’t know to expect.

We passed copper tailings stacked in rust-colored mounds, stretches of open sky, and red rock hillsides until the train entered a tunnel.

The darkness was immediate.

There’s something unsettling when light suddenly gives way to dark, an honest fear that catches you off guard, even when you know it’s coming. I found myself straining to see, trying to adjust to the new surroundings, instinctively pulling my head back inside the train until we finally emerged on the other side.

Later that evening over dinner, we shared pictures of our train ride. When I saw the photograph taken of us in the darkness, it unsettled me. I posted it on Instagram with a caption about heading down a dark path and trusting the conductor — God — to guide me through it.

When I first saw the image, I didn’t notice the light.

I felt the darkness.

I was seated next to my husband. You couldn’t see me in the picture, but I could see him. Both of us along for the ride. And somewhere beneath the surface, I already sensed darker days ahead.

Something about that image I just couldn’t shake.

What I was experiencing had a name: anticipatory grief. Only I just didn’t know it at the time. It’s the fear and emotional pain that can arrive before a loss actually occurs, grief that begins before the final goodbye. That photograph seemed to bring those emotions to the surface.

The feelings were disorienting. Without warning, waves of irritability, sadness, anger, and guilt all triggered by ordinary moments. I told myself I simply needed some time away, a respite from caregiving, from life as I knew it. So I planned a girls’ trip to Greece. I even signed up for a GriefShare class, fully intending to pass the information along to someone else who might need it.

I couldn’t name what I was feeling as grief. And yet something in me was already moving in that direction. I was managing, organizing, preparing, never once connecting any of it to what was quietly unfolding right in front of me even though my mind was trying to prepare me.

Grief researcher Mary-Frances O’Connor describes anticipatory grief as the place where the brain begins to reconcile two conflicting realities. When the brain senses a looming threat, it prioritizes the most urgent information — a survival instinct. That is why all I could see in that photograph was darkness. There was simply no cognitive space left to notice the light.

All of this was unfolding around the time his last bone marrow transplant was failing.

Eighteen months after that photograph was taken, Al was admitted to the hospital. He never came home.

When I look back at that photograph now, I understand it in a way I couldn’t then.

I see a completely different picture.

Because I have learned to survive in a world without him. I have moved through the darkness long enough to reach what I can only describe as acceptance. Not the absence of pain, but the presence of something steadier. At this stage in my grief, the light is no longer distant. It is in the foreground.

Grief, in its early days, consumes everything. There is no emotional bandwidth left to see past the darkness. But as healing slowly expands what I’ve come to call the grief space inside you, your heart begins to remember the love that was always there, not just the pain of the loss.

Gradually, my heart and mind begin to align again. O’Connor calls it gaining the cognitive budget to see beyond survival. I think of it as finally having room to breathe and in that breath, being able to look up.

I see the light.

How could I essentially live in two pictures at once?

The same image.
The same moment.
Seen entirely differently depending on where I stood in my grief.

I’m learning to appreciate the light now and to understand that the stretches of darkness are not a destination.

They are the passage.

Have you ever looked back at a moment and seen it differently than you did at the time?

Sometimes it’s a memory that pops up on my phone like this one — his big smile filling the screen without warning.

Sometimes the girls will say they were feeling him today or they were “channeling his spirit”. Which usually meant they had learned to advocate for themselves in ways others might not expect.

As the anniversary approaches, I notice I show up differently. It’s not always heavy grief, but something shifts in my demeanor.

There’s a term for it: latent mourning recognition — when the body and emotions remember before the mind fully makes the connection.

Maybe that’s why, today of all days, this story found its way to me.

I was reviewing photos and preparing for the launch of When the Music Stops — Discovering the Strength to Keep Moving Forward When Life’s Music Falls Silent when one of my girlfriends called and said, “I have to share something with you.”

She had been trying to confirm an upcoming appointment and needed medical information from more than fifteen years ago. The hospital couldn’t locate her file. She didn’t remember the doctor’s name. She wasn’t sure of the exact date. With so little to go on, possibly just a year, they weren’t able to help her.

She hung up feeling frustrated, disappointed and a little angry that no one seemed willing to dig deeper.

Before letting it go, she decided to search her old emails to see if she had saved anything related to her condition.

She had.

In 2009, Al had emailed her to ask how she was feeling. In her reply, she described everything in great detail. Her diagnosis, her medication, her doctor’s name, the details of her treatment including the date for her follow up appointment. That single email contained exactly what she needed for the hospital to locate her records. “I wonder what prompted me to share so much”, she said.

We both laughed not so much at coincidence, but at the timing of it all. And as we laughed, neither of us had even realized what date was approaching.

Only later did it occur to me.

After Al was correctly diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer, we learned that his symptoms had been misdiagnosed. For almost a year he had received treatment for something entirely different. That experience changed him. He became passionate about advocating for yourself. Keeping records, asking questions, keeping appointments, sharing information. He encouraged people to see a doctor even when something seemed small.

What may have felt like casual banter between the two of them years ago became, in this moment, something more. Another way he was still helping her advocate for herself.

When I speak with others who have lost someone, they often share stories like this. Sometimes it’s a scent. Sometimes an object. Other times it’s subtle, an old message surfacing at just the right moment offering comfort.

We both agreed he was watching over us, smiling that big smile we knew so well.

When I got off the phone, I couldn’t wait to tell my girls.

“Can you believe that?” I asked them.

They could hardly believe it.

My eldest’s eyes filled with tears. My youngest smiled and said, “Of course he did,” as if there had never been any doubt.

When has love surfaced in an unexpected way? I’d love to know if you’ve felt something similar.