The Space They Leave Behind

Grief doesn’t give you a heads up. It doesn’t text first. It just shows up loud, uninvited, and totally uninterested in your plans. One minute you’re getting through your day, and the next you’re trying to remember how to breathe because the world just flipped upside down.

It’s weird how the quiet hits first. Everything feels still. Heavy. Stale. And the hardest part? Watching the world keep moving like nothing happened. People keep running errands, posting selfies, and laughing at whatever’s trending, and you’re just… standing still. Trying to make it through a day without crying in the grocery store.

It’s suffocating, honestly. Like you’re floating through space while everyone else stays grounded. You want to scream, or maybe sleep, or both. And the worst part? There’s nothing to fix. Nothing to do. Just the aching reality that someone you love is gone, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.

But even in the middle of that pain, I’ve never stopped believing the soul sticks around. I think love doesn’t disappear just because the body does. Energy doesn’t die—it shifts. And I’ve felt it. I’ve felt the presence of someone I love in a breeze out of nowhere, a song at the right moment, a smell I haven’t noticed in years that hits me like a memory I didn’t know I needed.

Tyler (who always manages to casually drop life-changing thoughts) mentioned the other night, “When you hope or pray for something, you have to be specific.”

You think, ‘God, just let them get better.’ But sometimes “better” means they don’t get to stay. Sometimes “better” means free from pain, from fear, from the weight of this world. That kind of release can hurt like hell for us, but maybe it’s everything for them.

I think some people come into our lives to teach us how to love. Some come to teach us how to let go. And the ones who change us the most? They teach us both.

Grief didn’t feel like some beautifully tragic transformation. It felt like losing my footing in a life I thought I understood. But the thing is, sometimes when something breaks, that’s where the light finally gets in.

Grief changed how I see the world. It made me believe in signs, in intuition, in those gut feelings that remind you someone’s still with you, even if you can’t explain it. I know the people I’ve lost still stop by. I feel them. And I don’t think it’s wishful thinking—I think it’s real.

Now, grief is just part of me. Not something I carry like a backpack full of bricks every day, but something that lives in my bones. Some days it’s heavy, and some days it’s gentle. But it’s there. And surprisingly, it doesn’t always feel tragic anymore. Sometimes it feels... peaceful. Sometimes it feels like love that never ran out of ways to show up.

And yeah, people always said “grief doesn’t go away, it just changes” — and I wanted to roll my eyes into another dimension every time someone told me that after my mom died. But… they weren’t wrong. It does change. It becomes part of your rhythm. You start to carry it with you in a way that’s oddly normal. Maybe that sounds messed up, but sometimes it’s kind of beautiful too. Because grief, in its strange way, is proof that you loved deeply.

Now, I can say with a full heart: I wouldn’t pull them back from peace just so I could feel better. I miss them every single day—but I’m also deeply glad they are not in pain. They are somewhere better than here. Somewhere we can’t even imagine, where there’s no cancer, no heartbreak or pain, and all the days are good.

So if you’re grieving, I’m with you. Let it be messy. Let it be loud. Let it be silent. Let it be what it is. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just human. And the ones you miss? They're not gone. They're just closer than ever in a different way.

With love,

Taylor