When She Returned

by Lucinda Berry

I loved my family. I did, but most of my life was centered on caring for other people’s needs. Becoming a mom felt like I had forfeited all my rights in favor of others.

One of the worst things you could do to someone in the midst of tragedy was to give them a cliché, because the intensity of the loss was too big. I’d heard it all after James died. Sometimes it was better to say nothing.

Traumatic grief was groundless, a free fall into space. Unless you’d been there before, you couldn’t understand what it felt like.