The Moment I Didn't Expect

Our beloved Sadie taken in 2021

We just returned from our annual family vacation, a place that feels less like a destination and more like a part of who we are. At any given time you can find three generations of our family filling the lake with laughter that echoes back to us.

It is, in so many ways, sacred ground for us.

Every year, there are memories I quietly tuck away; photos of the kids, the crafts we made, their first time tubing, the ordinary and extraordinary all woven together. And every year, without even thinking about it, I would send pictures to my mom.

In recent years, even after she stopped coming on the trip, that part remained. It was my way of bringing her into it. Of saying, “You’re still here with us. You still belong in these moments.”

This year was different.

Not in the big, obvious ways. The trip itself was full of the same rhythms we love, like quiet mornings, lake days, laughter, and that familiar comfort of being together. I took pictures, of course. Just simple ones. Nothing particularly milestone-worthy. Just life unfolding in a place we love.

And then came the moment. I opened my phone to send the photos. Fully aware, of course, that I would be sending them to my dad this year. But awareness doesn’t always soften the impact.

In that split second, before logic could catch up, my heart did what it has always done. It reached for her. And the realization that this was something I would have sent to my mom rushed over me like a tidal wave.

It was so simple...so ordinary. And yet, it felt overwhelming.

Grief has a way of doing that. It doesn’t always arrive in the big, expected moments. Sometimes it finds you in the quiet, habitual spaces, the places love used to live so naturally you didn’t even notice it.

For a moment, I just sat there, holding my phone, feeling the weight of both what was and what is.

And then, gently, something shifted.

Because while she is no longer here in the way she once was, I know she is still with us,

in the very place that holds so much of her story...and ours.

That knowing doesn’t erase the ache, but it steadies it.

It allows me to take a breath… and slowly find my way back;

back to the present moment, back to the people in front of me, back to the memories we are still making. The memories that, one day, will be the ones we hold on to.

Grief may arrive like a wave, sudden and powerful, but love remains-steady and constant- beneath it.

And it is love that helps us return again and again, to the life still unfolding around us.

Find my book Light Lives Here: Finding Hope in the Valley of Grief HERE