Grief, Aging & Mortality: How We Walk Each Other Home

I recorded this reflection as well. If you’d prefer to listen while you read, or instead of reading, you can do so here: https://drive.google.com/.../13qIQFxsBsXEC44y3Lyh.../view...

In this series so far, I’ve written about how we repeat history, how language divides us, how we try to build moral compasses rooted in compassion, how we create better worlds through small local actions.

But underneath all of that, underneath politics and systems and arguments, there is something more intimate. Something none of us escape.

Grief.

Aging.

Mortality.

The simple truth that we do not live forever, and that in the end, we are all just walking each other home.

It’s a quiet shock, getting older. Your body changes in ways you didn’t agree to. Lines deepen. Certain aches linger. You can’t eat or drink like you once did without paying for it. You begin to notice how quickly seasons turn. How fast children grow. How swiftly a decade disappears.

When I was younger, I believed there would always be time. Time to begin things. Time to repair things. Time to return and say what should have been said. I assumed the people I loved would remain in place, fixed and available.

When my father died in 2008, the shock was immediate. It threw my life into a tailspin. I had spent many years estranged from him, and in the last year we had reunited, made peace, cried, and shared a few precious moments together. He met my girls, who were very young at the time. His death, along with a few other momentous events, made me question everything. Was I living authentically? Was I going in the direction I needed to? Was I the person I wanted to be? Did I have time to waste?

I realized just how very precious time was: snowflake moments. At thirty-eight, I had a true existential crisis that led to huge changes. The years after my separation were not easy. I felt like I was preserving the pearl of who I might become in my hand. I wasn’t even sure where I was going, but deep down I knew I had to figure myself out — for me, but also for my girls. The divorce was deeply painful, not just for them, but for everyone involved, including my ex-husband.

It’s been fifteen years since then. My girls are grown now and creating their own lives. I have evolved. I have moved through many chapters and many grief-filled moments. Choosing to move in the direction of self-discovery has not been easy, but it feels authentic and real.

My husband at the time accused me of changing. Some people resist change. It’s normal, I suppose. We want stability. We crave safety. But the only sure thing is that we won’t be here forever. I could die today. Or tomorrow. It isn’t dramatic. It’s simply true. And yet it’s something most of us cannot look at daily.

There is a strange beauty in recognizing impermanence. Not dramatic. Not philosophical. Just clear. The understanding that this ordinary afternoon will never repeat in exactly the same way. The way someone laughs. The way they set down their coffee cup. The sound of their voice calling your name. These are finite things.

And then there is grief.

We lose parents. We lose friends. We lose versions of ourselves. Illness changes the people we love. Moves reshape the architecture of our lives. Chapters close that we didn’t realize were ending.

Grief is not a mistake in the design.

Grief is the price of deep love.

If you have loved fully, you will one day ache. That ache does not mean you did something wrong. It means your heart was open.

Sometimes we experience a kind of love that feels like recognition — not fairy tale, not dramatic, just deeply known. And even then, there is no guarantee it will remain in physical form. Life shifts. Circumstances intervene. Bonds change.

What I have learned is this: love, once real, does not simply vanish. It softens. It reshapes. But it remains. The grief of separation can feel like a phantom limb — something once present, now absent, yet still felt. When I have had to distance myself from one of my people, it has never been easy.

On my skin, I carry the words “Still I Rise.” I chose them years ago, drawn from Maya Angelou — a woman who endured profound injustice and still rose in dignity and voice. I did not choose those words because life was easy. I chose them because it wasn’t.

Rising, for me, has never meant pretending grief doesn’t exist. It has meant standing up anyway. Continuing to love. Continuing to create. Continuing to show up for people even when something inside feels bruised.

An authentic life, for me, has meant living my emotions fully. I have spent years journaling, walking in the woods, and trying to understand not just the light parts of myself, but also the darker shadows, the parts I was afraid of, the parts I carried shame about. I needed that time to reconcile my childhood with the choices I had made. Sometimes midlife crisis is simply the return of the person we left behind, the realization that we are no longer aligned with the life we’re living.

There is grief in knowing you must change, even when you don’t want to. The actions required can ripple outward in ways you never intended. And yet, through it all, the people who truly matter remain. They allow you to grow. Others move on. That, too, is part of the story.

Over time, I’ve come to believe that this, more than ambition or achievement, is what we are here to do.

Walk each other home.

We sit beside someone through treatment. We hold hands at funerals. We make soup. We answer late-night calls. We drive across town because someone cannot sit alone in their house that evening.

We cannot prevent aging. We cannot bargain with mortality. But we can soften the path for one another.

Through the turbulent years of raising my girls and navigating life on my own, it often felt like I was driving through thick fog, head down, focused only on the stretch of road directly ahead. Hard years. In 2019, just before the pandemic began, the accumulated stress caught up with my body. I landed in the hospital for ten days with a serious infection. Years of anxiety had weakened my immune system.

I learned two things there. First, how deeply loved I was. The care and attention from friends and family answered any question I might have had. Second, that something in my life needed to change. Within a year, I had quit my job. I was fifty. Soon after, I sold my house and moved to Québec City. Now I teach art part-time. I love what I do.

Hard moments have a way of revealing just how fragile our lives really are, and how easily we take them for granted.

I often think of Le Petit Prince, wandering from planet to planet, observing the strange games of adults, counting, ruling, posturing. In the end, he learns something simple and severe: what matters is invisible. Love. Responsibility. Care.

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

The people we love shape us. The children we raise. The friends we choose. The students we guide. Even the land we walk upon. We are responsible for what we have loved.

The roses in my life are my people. My children. My Auntie Rita.

There is a line from Into the Wild that has stayed with me. After stripping his life down to isolation and wilderness, Chris McCandless wrote in the margin of a book: “Happiness only real when shared.”

After all that searching alone, that was the conclusion.

We are not meant to do this in isolation.

So I return to two small maxims that steady me: do what you can, with what you have, where you are. And work your garden of people.

One day, they will be gone. Or I will.

And when all the noise fades, when status and arguments and distractions fall away, what remains is how well we loved.

Maybe life is intricate and fragile, melting even as we try to hold it.

So let’s walk each other home with kindness. With humor. With patience. Not trying to repair the entire world at once, but tending the small circle entrusted to us.

Holding hands while we can.