Three years.
It feels impossible that so much time has passed, because the ache in my chest still feels as fresh as the day I lost my grandmother. People love to say “time heals,” but no one warns you about the quiet ways grief lingers — how it settles into your days, into your breath, into the empty spaces she used to fill.
Some losses don’t fade; they soften, maybe. They change shape. But they never really leave you.
Losing her wasn’t just losing my grandmother. It was losing the person who grounded me. The voice I could always count on. The warm place to fall when life felt heavy. She wasn’t just family — she was a piece of my foundation. And learning to live without a piece of your foundation… that takes time.
Grief is such a strange companion.
It shows up in the middle of the grocery store.
In the smell of something familiar.
In a song that somehow knows your heart better than you do.
Sometimes I’ll forget she’s gone — just for a blink — and then it hits me all over again. The remembering hurts more than the forgetting.
Healing, I’m learning, isn’t about waking up one day and not hurting anymore.
It’s about carrying the love and the loss together.
It’s about figuring out how to breathe around the ache instead of trying to erase it.
I’ve been trying to let myself feel things instead of swallowing them down. Some days the sadness sits heavy, and some days it’s gentle — like she’s sitting beside me instead of being gone. I’ve been giving myself space to remember her intentionally… flipping through old photos, cooking something she used to make, letting her memory fill the room instead of pushing it away. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it helps. Most days it’s both.
Talking about her makes the weight lighter — even if it doesn’t make it go away.
And doing little things in her honor makes me feel connected to her in a quiet, comforting way. Lighting a candle. Planting something she’d love. Doing something kind because she would’ve wanted me to.
I’m trying to give myself grace too.
Grief is tiring in ways no one tells you about.
Some days I feel okay. Other days, the ache comes out of nowhere and knocks me off my feet. And I’m learning that this doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong. It just means I loved her deeply — and deeply is how she stayed in my life.
After three years, the pain hasn’t disappeared. But the way I carry it has changed.
I’m starting to see that maybe healing isn’t about letting go…
but about letting love stay.
I know she would want me to live a full life.
To laugh, to grow, to keep moving forward with an open heart.
To remember her with warmth instead of only sorrow.
And little by little, I’m trying to do just that.
If you’re grieving too — whether it’s been months or years — please hear me when I say this: you’re not behind. You’re not supposed to be “over it.” You’re learning to live in a world that feels different now. And that takes courage.
On the days when the pain sneaks up and feels too heavy to hold, remind yourself that you’re still healing. You’re still becoming. You’re still learning how to carry both the love and the loss. And that’s okay.
Love doesn’t disappear.
Not even in grief.
It just finds new places to live in you.
And that, I think, is how we keep going.
One soft, steady step at a time.
