Country life.
The grass was high that week, the kind of green that looks alive enough to breathe. I had put it off for days—the mowing, the thinking, the feeling—until the sun was high and the air smelled like summer at last. I climbed onto the riding mower with my earbuds in and hit play on a playlist I used to love. Music, I thought, would make the work go faster.
But grief has its own volume knob.
By the second lap, a song came on that reached straight through me—one of those that used to play when the house was full of noise and laughter, when my sons were still living. My throat caught, and before I knew it, the tears came fast and hard. There I was, in the middle of two acres, mowing and sobbing like I could water the whole field myself.
That’s when a car passed by, slowing down just enough for me to notice the couple inside. The woman turned her head toward me, lips moving in what I’m sure was pity. I imagined her saying, “Oh honey, poor thing. Look how much she hates to mow!”
And that was it. Something about that imagined sentence—the absurdity of it, the sheer mismatch of truth and appearance. It cracked me wide open. I started laughing. The kind of laugh that steals your breath and doubles you over. The mower rolled to a stop as I fell off the seat kind of backwards, landing in the grass I’d been trying to tame.
For a good while, I just lay there. Face to the sky, tears and laughter still tangled. I remember thinking that if grief was going to knock me down, at least it had the decency to give me a soft landing and a good view while I was there. The clouds drifted lazily above, as if my world hadn’t ended at all. And somewhere inside that expanse, I felt something looking back—steady, patient, vast. The presence I’d been begging for had been here the whole time, waiting for me to stop moving long enough to see it.
After that day, I started paying attention to the quiet places. The in-betweens. The way light slid through the lace curtains in the late afternoon, the sound of wind pressing its hand against the window. I began making small rituals of noticing — the kind that anchor you when words can’t. A mug of tea at sunrise. An unplanned break in the afternoon. Whispering thank yous I wasn’t sure anyone could hear.
Grief didn’t leave. It simply changed shape — from a storm I couldn’t survive into a tide I could learn to float upon. Some days it was still rough water. But even waves retreat eventually.
Months later, standing barefoot on a beach in Oahu, I watched the ocean hurl itself against the shore. The waves were enormous that winter — thirty feet bases, white foam roaring with power and grace. I thought about how much my sons would have loved it, how they would have cheered each crash and dared the sea to do more. That ache rose again, sharp and familiar, but instead of turning away, I watched harder. 
Then it happened. In one of the waves, just for a heartbeat, I saw my youngest son’s face. Smiling. Radiant. So full of joy it broke me open all over again — but this time, into light. I wasn’t imagining it; I was remembering truth. The ocean, the sky, the laughter — none of it separate from him, from any of them. Joy wasn’t gone; it had simply moved.
I don’t pretend to understand how love reaches us after death, only that it does. Sometimes it’s in music that wrecks you mid-mow. Sometimes it’s in a vision that feels too impossible to name. Sometimes it’s in laughter that pulls you off your feet and lays you flat in the grass until the heavens have your full attention.
Now, whenever I feel the pull of sorrow again, I step outside. I look up. I remember that the sky I once cursed for being empty is, in fact, full — of memory, of meaning, of every soul I’ve ever loved.
And if you, too, are somewhere out there, mowing your way through a field of grief — music too loud, tears too real, heart too heavy — I hope you fall off once in a while. I hope you find yourself flat on your back, laughing through tears, staring into the endless blue that is both here and beyond.
Because one day, the sky will look back. And when it does, you’ll understand: you were never meant to carry it alone.
With my love,
Connie
