There’s this feeling that settles into a house after someone you love has passed away.
Most of us know it.
A kitchen that still smells like their coffee.
The closet full of clothes nobody will wear again.
And then there’s the rest of it.
Drawers, shelves, boxes in the basement, all sitting there waiting for someone to decide what happens next.
And usually, that someone is you.
A few years ago, I stood in my mother-in-law’s living room a week after her funeral. Four decades of belongings, and I had no idea where to start.
Photo albums I’d never seen. Cards from people I didn’t recognize. A china cabinet packed with dishes she’d been saving for “someday.”
She loved every bit of it.
And sorting through it almost broke me.
It took my husband and me weeks to finish. And by the time we did, I was carrying something I couldn’t put a name to.
A heaviness that wasn’t really grief, but wasn’t separate from it either.
It came from the weight of everything she’d left behind, and the work of figuring out what to do with all of it.
I’ve since learned there’s a name for that feeling. It’s called second grief.
And almost every family runs into it, usually without seeing it coming.
What I’ve also learned is that we have more say in this than we think. We can’t stop the loss itself (nobody can).
But we can make sure the people we love most don’t have to grieve us twice.