Today is day 52.
The first thirty days were strange.
My mind still worked like a machine, remembering every theory about grief, every piece of wisdom people said in good faith.
I knew the stages, the logic, the acceptance, the surrender.
I knew everything I was supposed to feel, except… I didn’t feel it.
My heart was late. It walked slower than my brain.
And then one morning, I woke up, and it finally caught up, everything all at once.
That was when the real mourning began.
The days blur now.
They pass like wind through half-closed curtains, you can feel the movement, but you can’t really tell where it begins or ends.
At work, I’m fine. More than fine, even.
I talk numbers. I write emails. I make decisions.
I smile at people who ask, “How are you doing?”
as if grief can be measured by productivity.
My words are precise. My logic still sharp.
I almost sound like the version of me before.
When I’m with friends, I’m articulate, almost theatrical.
I can talk about loss like a lecture, dissect it like literature.
They laugh, they listen, they think I’m coping.
They don’t know that my eloquence is just another survival mechanism,
a way to intellectualize what I can’t afford to feel.
But the moment I come home,
everything collapses into quiet.
The house feels too big,
the silence too intimate.
Sometimes I don’t even turn the lights on, I just sit.
Other nights, I curl up in bed,
counting the hours until dawn feels close enough to pretend I’ve rested.
After day thirty, something shifted.
I stopped touching my kitchen.
The space that once smelled like butter and vanilla,
now smells like nothing.
I started packing things,
the colorful, artisanal utensils I used to collect so proudly.
The mixing bowls. The mismatch ceramic. The spatula that fits perfectly in my hand.
Each one used to mean hope,
now they just take up space.
So I wrapped them and stored them away,
like I was storing a version of myself I no longer know how to reach.
My bakery corner
the one I once called my “happy place”
has been quiet for months.
Even my oven feels like it’s waiting for me to come back.
But I don’t have the courage to turn it on.
It’s strange, how something that once healed me
now reminds me of everything that’s missing.
Some days I’m angry.
Mostly at my husband.
He should’ve known I didn’t need fixing.
I needed space to fall apart.
But he keeps trying to rearrange my sadness like furniture
as if pain can be made tidy.
He doesn’t mean harm.
Still, his way of loving makes me lonelier.
Then there’s my family.
The same people my mother raised with such certainty
now suddenly strangers wearing her values like borrowed coats.
I watch everything she built start to crumble,
and I’m too tired to pick up the pieces.
So what’s left to move forward for?
I keep asking that.
The person who shaped me, who measured my joy by her own,
is gone.
No child to anchor me,
no home that feels like one.
I just want days to get by.
Not better, not worse, just pass.
The only thing that still makes sense
is faith.
I pray harder now,
not because I have faith all figured out,
but because prayer is the only thing that feels real.
The sound of my own breath in sujud
it’s the only rhythm that doesn’t lie to me.
I don’t ask for much anymore.
Not strength. Not clarity.
Just a quiet heart,
and maybe, someday, a reunion.
People say grief makes you selfish.
Maybe they’re right.
Because these days,
I don’t care about much else.
I can’t.
I’m not trying to hold on to pain.
I just miss my mother.
That’s all.
0 comments