Grief is like the ocean.
At first, the waves are enormous. They come one after another, and you barely have time to catch your breath before the next one hits. They knock you down, pull you under, and for a while it feels like all you can do is survive them.
As time passes, the ocean starts to settle. The waves come less often. Most of them get smaller. You learn how to stand when they hit. You learn how to breathe through them. Eventually, you can go long stretches where the water is calm.
But the waves never completely stop.
Sometimes one rolls in so quietly you barely notice it. A song they loved. A smell that reminds you of them. A place you went together. Something funny happens and, for half a second, you think about telling them.
Then sometimes, without warning, one comes crashing in hard enough to knock the wind out of you again. A birthday. A holiday. An old photograph. An empty chair. The realization that they are still gone, and always will be.
That does not mean you have gone backward. It does not mean you have failed to heal.
It just means grief does not disappear. It changes.
You learn to live your life around the absence. You keep moving, you keep living, and you carry them with you in the memories they left behind. But every now and then, a wave comes in and reminds you just how much you still miss someone who is never coming back.
