Grief is the furniture you inherited from your maternal grandmother living on your enclosed front porch for over a year because you didn’t want a daily reminder that she is gone inside your house.

Grief is slowly moving those items, one by one into your house, when it felt right.

Grief is the frame of the bed that you slept on when you spent two precious weekends caring for your Grandma when she was on hospice. It wasn’t too comfortable. The head of the bed was raised up on blocks to help with Grandma’s reflux.

She was in a hospital bed in the next room, and you realized she wouldn’t be sleeping in her bed again – it would only be her caregivers who spent restless nights there, with their cell phones waking them every two to four hours to give your grandmother the meds that kept her comfortable at the end.

You took the blocks out from under the head of the frame and gratefully slept horizontally that night.Grief is saying yes when you were offered that bed frame when the time came to divide Grandma’s belongings.

Grief is not being able to think about putting the bed back together, about picking a mattress more comfortable than the one you slept on the last time you saw your Grandma before she passed.

Grief is your kids playing on the porch, flipping the bed frame boards sideways, and discovering they made the perfect highway for marbles and toy cars.

Grief is your marble collection, which started as a kid with a mystery ottoman that lived at your paternal grandmother’s house. It was filled with an assortment of game pieces which were now too jumbled to serve their original purpose, but were perfect for creative play. Probably some of your marbles came from that ottoman, but you can’t be sure because it’s been so long, and you’ve added and lost too many marbles since then, literally and figuratively.

For many years, you hoarded your marbles in a glass jar, afraid to let your kids play with them and inevitably lose them, this memory of your other Grandmother who’s been gone much longer than this more recent loss. This year, after letting go of so many things, you let the kids have the marbles.

Grief is wondering if one grandma’s marbles are rolling down the other grandma’s bed frame, and wondering if the delight on their great grandkids’ faces at this invented game is bringing them joy.

Grief is wondering if it’s possible for them to experience more joy than they are already experiencing right now.