The dinner party was elegant. The candles were lit, the wine was breathing, and the conversation was light. It had been exactly three years since Daniel died, and to the people around this table, that was apparently the statute of limitations on sadness.
“So, Elena,” Karen said, pouring me a glass of Pinot Noir. “I saw you still have Daniel’s office set up. Have you thought about… turning it into a guest room? It might be healthy. To clear the air.”
The table went quiet. It was the “Grief Check-In,” the moment where my well-meaning friends assessed if I was successfully “fixed” yet.
“I like his office,” I said quietly. “It smells like him.”
“We know, honey,” Mark added gently. “But it’s been three years. You don’t want to get stuck, right? At some point, you have to… well, you know. Turn the page.”
Turn the page. Move on. Get over it.
I felt the familiar heat rising in my chest. For three years, I had played by their rules. I had smiled when I wanted to scream. I had hidden my tears in the bathroom so I wouldn’t ruin their brunch. I had pretended that the hole in my chest was shrinking when, in reality, I had just learned to grow around it.
I looked at their expectant faces. They wanted the “Survivor Elena.” They wanted the woman who triumphantly overcame tragedy. They didn’t want the widow who still slept with her husband’s t-shirt.
I put my fork down. The clatter echoed in the silence.
“No,” I said.
“No?” Karen blinked.
“This is my grief journey and nobody else’s,” I said, my voice shaking but gaining strength with every word. “I am done performing wellness for you.”
I stood up. I wasn’t angry at them; I was angry at the expectation that love ends just because a life does.
“I will never allow anyone to put a timeline on my grief,” I declared, looking Mark in the eye. “There is no calendar for this. There is no expiration date where I suddenly wake up and don’t miss the person who was half of my soul.”
“We just want you to be happy,” Karen stammered.
“I can be happy and sad,” I told her. “I can laugh at a joke and still miss him ten minutes later. That’s not being stuck; that’s being human. I will never feel bad for having a day when I scream and cry and let it out“.
I thought about the night before, when I had sobbed on the kitchen floor because I couldn’t remember the sound of his laugh. I had felt so guilty then, so weak. But now, I realized that pain was just the receipt for how much I had loved.
“I will never be guilted into missing my loved one any less just because so much time has gone by,” I continued. “Time doesn’t erase him. It just adds days to the count of how long I’ve survived without him.”
I picked up my purse. I realized I didn’t want to be at this table anymore. I wanted to go home to his office. I wanted to sit in his chair.
“And one more thing,” I said, pausing at the door. “I will never, ever stop talking about them just because people think that I should be ‘over it by now’“. “Daniel existed. He mattered. And as long as I have breath, his name will be spoken in my house.”
I walked out into the night air. For the first time in three years, I didn’t feel heavy. I felt light. I hadn’t moved on from my grief, but I had finally moved on from the need to apologize for it.
