The messy truth about grief | Nora McInerny

2014 was a big year for me.

Do you ever have that, just like a big year, like a banner year?

For me, it went like this: October 3, I lost my second pregnancy.

And then October 8, my dad died of cancer.

And then on November 25, my husband Aaron died after three years with stage-four glioblastoma,

which is just a fancy word for brain cancer.

So, I'm fun.

Now, since 2014, I will tell you I have remarried a very handsome man named Matthew, we have

four children in our blended family, we live in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota,

USA.

We have a rescue dog.

I drive a minivan, like the kind where doors open and I don't even touch them.

By any measure, life is really, really good, but I haven't "moved on."

I haven't moved on, and I hate that phrase so much, and I understand why other people

do.

Because what it says is that Aaron's life and death and love are just moments that I

can leave behind me -- and that I probably should.

And when I talk about Aaron, I slip so easily into the present tense, and I've always thought

that made we weird.

And then I noticed that everybody does it.

And it's not because we are in denial or because we're forgetful, it's because the people we

love, who we've lost, are still so present for us.

So, when I say, "Oh, Aaron is..." it's because Aaron still is.

He's present for me in the work that I do, in the child that we had together, in these

three other children I'm raising, who never met him, who share none of his DNA, but who

are only in my life because I had Aaron and because I lost Aaron.

He's present in my marriage to Matthew, because Aaron's life and love and death made me the

person that Matthew wanted to marry.

So I've not moved on from Aaron, I've moved forward with him.

These are the experiences that mark us and make us just as much as the joyful ones, and

just as permanently—long after you get your last sympathy card or your last hot dish.

Like, we don't look at the people around us experiencing life's joys and wonders and tell

them to "move on," do we?

We don't send a card that's like, "Congratulations on your beautiful baby," and then, five years

later, think like, "Another birthday party?

Get over it."

But grief is kind of one of those things, like falling in love or having a baby or watching

"The Wire" on HBO, where you don't get it until you get it, until you do it.

And once you do it, once it's your love or your baby, once it's your grief and your front

row at the funeral, you get it.

You understand what you're experiencing is not a moment in time, it's not a bone that

will reset, but that you've been touched by something chronic.

Something incurable.

It's not fatal, but sometimes grief feels like it could be.

And if we can't prevent it in one another, what can we do?

We need each other to remember, to help each other remember, that grief is this multitasking

emotion.

That you can and will be sad, and happy; you'll be grieving, and able to love in the same

year or week, the same breath.

We need to remember that a grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again.

If they're lucky, they'll even find love again.

But yes, absolutely, they're going to move forward.

But that doesn't mean that they've moved on.