Carrying Pain Without Being Crushed

A friend of mine sent me this quote the other day. Her sister lost her husband unexpectedly last Christmas Eve. It’s one of those quotes that sounds very different depending on where you are in grief.

"There's a curious thing about pain. In the beginning, it's an enemy, it's something that you don't want to face or think about or deal with. Yet with time it becomes almost a friend. If you've lost someone you love very much, in the beginning you can't bear it, but as the years go by, the pain of losing them is what reminds you so vividly of them - that they were alive." — Audrey Hepburn

I didn't believe this for a long time. When my husband Robert died, the pain wasn't curious. It was excruciating. It sat on my chest and made it hard to breathe. It woke me up at night. It ambushed me in the middle of the grocery store. The idea that this unbearable ache could ever become anything close to a friend felt impossible. Insulting, even.

But Audrey was right.

The shift doesn't happen quickly. It won't feel this raw forever, but it takes longer than anyone wants it to. The change happens so slowly you might not notice it until you look back and realize the weight you're carrying doesn't crush you the way it used to. And you can't measure your healing against anyone else's timeline. Grief moves at its own pace, and that pace is different for everyone.

In the beginning, the pain was an enemy I couldn't escape. A few months after Robert died, I was moving out of the home we'd shared. I needed to hook up our media system and couldn't remember how. He always did that. For a split second, I thought, "I'll just call him and have him talk me through it." Then reality hit. I stood there and cried. The thought was so fleeting, so automatic, and so impossible all at once.

Those moments were everywhere in the early years. I'd reach for the phone. I'd set the table for one too many. I'd be thinking of something I needed to tell him before remembering he wasn't there to hear it. Each time felt like falling into the loss all over again. The pain was sharp, immediate, and relentless.

For too many years, I ran from it. I filled my days with noise and people and anything that kept me from sitting still long enough to feel the full weight of what I'd lost. I didn't deal with it, I just kept moving. That worked for a while, but eventually the quiet caught up with me.

The shift didn't happen all at once. It crept in over years. Maybe around year ten, though I'm not entirely sure when. I was a young widow, which might have stretched the timeline. I don't know if that's typical or not. What I do know is that one day I realized the pain had softened into something else. It wasn't gone. It had just changed shape.

Now, more than twenty years later, the pain isn't pain anymore. It's fondness. It's nostalgia. I think about Robert often, but not with the sharp ache that used to double me over. I wonder what kind of older man he would have been. I picture him with gray hair, maybe a little thicker around the middle, still making terrible jokes or singing his favorite songs in the kitchen.

The grief shows up differently now. It arrives during the big moments, the milestones he should have been here for. On Christmas Day this year, my daughter Emmy announced she's pregnant. My first thought, immediate and vivid, was how over the moon her dad would have been to be a grandfather. I didn't say anything out loud in that moment. I just felt it. Bittersweet. Joy mixed with the quiet ache of his absence.

That's what Audrey meant, I think. The pain of losing him is what reminds me so vividly that he was alive. When I think about him now, it's not just the loss I feel. It's the memory of who he was. The sound of his laugh. The way he'd drum his fingers on the steering wheel. The specific brand of chaos he brought into a room just by walking into it.

The pain became the thread that connects me to those memories. It doesn't crush me anymore. It just reminds me he was real. He was here. He mattered.

If you're in the early years of grief and reading this, wondering if this unbearable weight will ever lift, I can't tell you when. I can tell you it will get different. The shift happens slowly, so slowly you might not notice it until you look back. And you can't measure your healing against anyone else's timeline. Some people find their footing in two years. Some take ten. Some take longer. None of those timelines are wrong.

What I can tell you is that the pain won't always feel this excruciating. Right now, it's an enemy. It feels like something you have to survive, something that might break you if you let your guard down. And maybe that's true for a while. But one day, without you even noticing, it will soften. It will stop being the thing that defines every moment and start being something you carry quietly.

And eventually, the pain becomes something else entirely. It becomes the thing that brings him back, not in a way that breaks you, but in a way that reminds you he was yours. That you loved him. That he existed in this world and left a mark on it, and on you.

That's the curious thing about pain. It doesn't disappear. It just becomes part of the story. And the story, even with all its ache, is worth holding onto.

With grace for the mess,

~Stef