So the other day, while I was changing my sheets, I was thinking about my “new” quilt that I got. Really adorable, looks great with the frame that was gifted to us a while ago, and fits well with some of the décor I got from my grandmother when she moved from her home to in with my aunt. I thought, “oh, I’d like to show her a picture” only, of course… I can’t. It was a weird moment where I was going about my business, and suddenly a “truck” came out of nowhere and hit me.

This may sound a bit silly, it’s a quilt, but my grandmother liked when we shared our lives. Big things, small things, silly things, whatever we wanted to share, she wanted to hear. And “I got a beautiful new quilt” likely would have come up in discussion with us.

But it’s been a while. It’s been several months since she passed and nearly a year since I had to stop my regular calls with her because she was drifting from us mentally. Yet I found myself crying because I can’t tell my grandmother about the damn quilt.

I am fine. I had a bit of a cry, and writing this is cathartic and helpful. But mostly, it just made me think how… dumb grief is. I don’t mean how we experience it or express it is dumb. Just that it makes no worldly sense for me to just be going about my business and wham, grief truck. But it is like that.

I don’t share this to garner sympathy, although hell, I’ll accept it, LOL, but more because I think we still struggle to talk about these things in society as a whole. Sometimes something like a quilt is going to make you cry. Sometimes you’ll remember for the oddest reason. And it’s okay. It’s okay that it takes a while, and it’s okay to work through it at different paces at different times.

And it’s also okay because it reminds us of the good things. I was blessed to have a grandmother that I loved to talk to and who loved to hear me tell her about everything from major life events to “I got a new quilt, and it’s really pretty.” And depending on what happens after we die, I still do have that… It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t take away the pain, but it can help me to see all sides of it. To process the good and the bad.

Grief is hard, it lasts, it’s just like that sometimes.