Published: November 16, 2025 at 01:14 AM

Tags: grief, personal, poetry, reflections, anniversary, loss

Today marks three years since Emily passed. It still feels strange to write that down… three years. The calendar insists on calling it distance, but grief doesn’t really move in straight lines or neat increments. Some days it feels like a lifetime ago. Other days it feels like I’m right back in the moment everything changed, the air turning thin, the world narrowing to a single point.

Anniversaries have a way of stirring all of that back up. They’re not loud days. They’re quiet, heavy ones. I’ve learned that silence carries its own kind of memory, it’s in the way the house settles at night, or the familiar shape of a morning routine that still feels like it’s missing someone.

I didn’t want to write a long post today, but I also didn’t want the day to pass without acknowledging it. I’m grateful for the people who reached out, some with messages, some with nothing more than a simple “thinking of you.” Those things matter more than they know. Grief is personal, but kindness shared into it softens the edges a little.

Below is the poem I wrote for today. Writing is one of the few ways I make sense of things like this. Some feelings don’t settle until they’re given shape.

Learning the Undertow

February 15 — For the third anniversary

Three years flip past on the calendar,
The air still carries a hush in the room.
A silence that still folds through the day,
Pressing yesterday on into tomorrow.

I pour coffee, trace the rim with a thumb,
Remebering the weight of your hand.
Steam curls like a question unasked,
The clock keeps its indifferent march.

Outside, leaves turn without permission,
Rivers forget the names of their banks.
Walking the roads, but the map has shifted,
Every corner a mirror, every shadow a ghost.

I keep the door unlatched for echoes,
Let the wind carry hints of your voice.
The ache a tide that learns new shores,
While I learn to swim in its undertow.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.
I’m doing alright. Grief doesn’t disappear, but it changes shape, and so do we.
And I’m thankful for the people God has placed around me who help make these days a little lighter.

Psalm 34:18 (KJV)
“The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”