Before and After

There is a before, and then there is an after.

I have heard this in different ways from many of the people I have supported through death and grief.

Sometimes it is said directly.

Sometimes it is tucked into a conversation about something seemingly unrelated about a house, a cottage, a holiday, a particular room, a favourite chair.

Before, this was my favourite place to come.

Before, I loved being here.

Before, this was where we always spent Christmas.

And then:

After they died, I couldn't stand coming here. Or, It doesn't feel like the same place anymore.

Death has a way of dividing a life into before and after.

There is the obvious before and after: before they died, and after.

But there are so many smaller before and afters within it.

Before the phone call.

After the phone call.

Before the police officer arrived at the door.

After they told you.

Before you knew.

After you knew.

Before you walked into the room.

After you walked out.

Before you saw their name in your phone.

After you realized you would never see it again.

Before you could walk into a particular place without thinking about it.

After that place became somewhere you could barely bear to be.

I think this is one of the things about grief that can be difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.

The world may look exactly the same.

The cottage is still there.

The kitchen is still there.

The road you drove together is still there.

The restaurant where you had dinner every Friday is still serving dinner with many happy customers.

The song still comes on the radio.

The calendar still moves forward.

And something has happened to your relationship with all of it.

A place can become a memory.

An object can become a relic.

A date can become an anniversary.

A familiar route can become a road you avoid.

A photograph can suddenly hold an entire lifetime.

And sometimes, something completely ordinary becomes extraordinary simply because of when it existed in relation to the person you lost.

There was a before. And now there is an after.

I have come to notice how often people talk about this without necessarily calling it grief.

They might tell me about a home that no longer feels like home.

Or a holiday that will never feel the same.

Or a family tradition that has become too painful to continue.

Or a place they used to love that now carries a physical heaviness.

These aren't necessarily things they expected to grieve.

They are grieving the relationship they once had with the world around them.

Because when someone dies, it isn't only the person who is gone.

A version of your life is gone too.

The version where that person was alive.

The version where you could call them.

The version where you could walk into a room and expect to find them there.

The version where the future still included them in all the ordinary ways you hadn't yet stopped to consider.

And then, suddenly, there is the after.

I think about how many of these moments happen quietly.

There may be no ceremony for them.

No one sends flowers because you can no longer sit in your favourite chair.

No one brings a casserole because the family cottage has become unbearable.

No one necessarily recognizes that the grocery store you used to visit together now feels like an emotional minefield.

But these things matter.

Grief changes our relationship with the physical world.

It changes the meaning of places.

It changes the weight of objects.

It changes what certain words mean.

It changes what we notice.

And sometimes, it changes us.

I have heard people describe these before-and-afters in my work in several ways.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the after.

It isn't a failure to return to a place and find that it feels different.

It isn't a failure to avoid somewhere for a while.

It isn't a failure if a tradition needs to change, or if a room needs to be rearranged, or if you need to leave the cottage earlier than you used to.

Sometimes we need to allow the after to be the after.

Not force it to become the before again.

Not rush ourselves back into the life we had.

Because the truth is, we can't go back.

Someone has died.

And that changes things.

But perhaps, with time, the places that once held only pain can begin to hold something else too.

Not the same thing.

Never exactly the same.

But something that can exist alongside the loss.

The cottage can become a place where you remember.

The song can become something you can eventually listen to again.

The holiday can become different.

The home can become yours in a new way.

The before doesn't have to disappear.

And the after doesn't have to remain unbearable forever.

Maybe grief is, in part, learning how to live in the after.

Learning what has changed.

Learning what hasn't.

Learning which parts of the before we want to carry with us.

And slowly, sometimes very slowly, discovering what can become possible again.

Because there is a before.

And there is an after.

And between the two is a moment that cannot be undone.

A death.

A phone call.

A knock at the door.

A sentence that changes everything.

And then, somehow, we begin to make a life from there with room for more afters.