Grief doesn’t come gently. It doesn’t arrive in soft waves or give you a chance to brace yourself. It crashes in, full force, like a gut punch you never recover from. When the woman who raised you, the one who was both mother and grandmother, dies, it doesn’t just break your heart. It fractures your foundation.

She was the one who knew exactly how you liked your toast. The one who stayed up when you were sick, rubbing your back while the rest of the world slept. The one who had the answers when life felt too damn big. She was home, even when home was just a tiny, cluttered kitchen that smelled like banana bread and whatever else she happened to be cooking.

And then she was gone.

Nobody prepares you for the quiet. Not just the absence of her voice, but the silence where her presence used to be. The phone that doesn’t ring. The text that never comes. The chair she used to sit in, empty in a way that makes your stomach drop every time you see it.

People will tell you she lived a good life. That she’s in a better place. That she wouldn’t want you to be sad. And you will want to scream, because none of that fills the black hole inside your chest. None of it brings back the way she smelled, the way she scolded you but loved you harder than anyone ever has.

Grief is ugly. It’s snapping at people for no reason. It’s breaking down in the cereal aisle because you saw her favorite brand and almost grabbed it before remembering. It’s feeling angry because the world has the audacity to keep turning while yours has crumbled.

So how do you cope? Hell if I know. But here’s what I do:

I talk to her when I’m alone. Maybe it’s crazy, but I do it anyway.
I wear her old cardigan, even though it smells more like my closet now than it does her.
I let myself cry when I need to, and I don’t apologize for it.
I tell her stories to my kid so he knows the kind of love she gave me.
I hold on to the parts of her that live inside me, the strength, the resilience, the way she never took shit from anyone, the way she loved God so selflessly and turned to Him even when her life was falling apart.

And I keep going.

Because she didn’t raise me to fall apart. She raised me to be strong. To survive. And even though it feels impossible some days, I owe it to her to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Even if every step hurts like hell.