The Milestone Cipher

Grief is a contradiction of contradictions.

It pulls you one way, then shoves you the other. You set your desperate mind on a given course, then your broken heart leads you astray. You long to live, to make new memories, but the fear of losing the old ones paralyzes you. You want to choose life, but in the ashes of the life that once was, you find yourself drawn ever-closer to death.

Push. Pull. Give. Take. Back and forth. Over and over again. Day after day.

As I’ve said before, grief is dynamic; it fluctuates with an unpredictable rhythm. It’s staggering and confusing, especially if you feel isolated and alone (which you do).

Your life was once a linear narrative. It wasn’t perfect, certainly, but it was digestible; you could follow the story. Now every dawn is a plot twist, every dusk a cliffhanger. The precise moment of your loss was the precipice of this chaos, and you had no choice but to jump off.

Now the story is phantasmagoric. It washes over you in waves, and every day feels like a slow drowning. Frantic and futile.

This drowning is never more pronounced than in milestone moments. Weddings, holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. Those special days that emphasize what was lost, what could have been, the moments that amplify the absence.

Last weekend, one of my sisters got married. It was a magnificent ceremony held at a plantation home, fully awash in the antebellum flare and southern charm of simpler times. Then, 12 hours later, I watched as my other sister graduated from the University of Kentucky. Our 93-year-old Mamaw sat in front of me and cheered as the last of her grandchildren accepted their diploma.

It was a weekend of milestones. And honestly, it was wonderful. I beamed with love and pride, and though I tried to hide it, I cried at both events. They were happy tears.

Mostly.

Mingling with the joy was a trace of melancholy, a residual symptom of the grief that never seems to go away. It was, once again, the presence of absence, the vacuous canyon carved into the center of my life.

The chaos. The phantasmagoria. The bend in the road.

But then something peculiar happened.

Sunday afternoon, when everything was over, I had a startling revelation. For the first time since losing my wife almost 3 years ago, I realized that a milestone is more than just an amplification of absence; it’s an amplification of presence. It’s not just about who isn’t there; it’s about who is.

Milestones aren’t about forgetting. They’re about remembering.

The new doesn’t wash away the old. Every new memory is stained with those that came before it.

There exists a presence within every absence, a premiere in every finale. And in the same way, there’s a milestone within every milestone, an unspoken cipher of hidden significance.

As I watched my sisters enter new and exciting seasons of their lives, the vacuous canyon was there; the phantasmagoria tugged at me.

But something else was there, too.

Someone.

Standing beside me.

The absence was still there, almost crushing at times, but she was proof that the chaos doesn’t win. She’s the premiere in my finale, the presence in the absence.

I encourage you this week to stare down the cipher, to find the milestones within the milestones. Acknowledge the absence without being consumed by it; don’t be afraid to make new memories, even if they’re stained by old ones.

Grief is a contradiction of contradictions, but the chaos doesn’t win.

A fellow journeyer,

Bryan