Grief is quiet when it sits with me in private moments.
When I talk to Tom.
When I hear him talk back in my heart — the tone, the humor, the way his words still find me.

Grief is loud when I weep.
When I beg the air to take me back in time — to change the unchangeable.
When the missing of him fills my chest so completely that there’s no room for breath.

But mostly, grief is constant.
It hums beneath every part of my life.

When I drive, I look for his car — a habit I don’t want to break.
When I sleep, I dream he’s beside me — alive and laughing with me just a moment longer.
When I work, I now long for the interruption of his text or phone call — something ordinary, something alive.

He is everywhere.
In the art that catches my eye.
In the stories of sons and brothers and grandsons.
In graffiti, the Northern Lights, and rusted bridges.
In Pittsburgh and Baltimore — cities that forever hold pieces of him.
In the faces of his beautiful friends who still reach for me.
At his sister’s wedding — where the beauty of joy and the sting of longing stood side by side.

Grief doesn’t leave.
It changes shape, but it doesn’t end.
It’s the quiet and the loud.
The stillness and the storm.
The reminder that love doesn’t disappear when a body does.