The World Keeps Going: Holding the Lantern
Doorways.
When you stand in one, or walk through one, what comes to mind?
I think about how many doorways I walk through daily. Each one, a portal.
At home, I’m constantly walking through doorways. Living room to kitchen. Hallway to bedroom. Bedroom to bathroom.
Some doorways lead to rooms we move through easily. Others lead to closets, cabinets. Places where things are kept, stored, tucked away.
And some doors stay closed. Because what’s behind them feels too painful to see. Too much to feel. Too heavy to remember.
I’ve been sitting in spaces out in “the wild” lately. Coffee shops, bookstores, and park benches. Listening. Capturing words and phrases I hear in conversation. Threads that run through our lives. Things that connect us. Remind us we’re human.
And I wonder…
Do people realize what lives underneath the words they speak? Do the people listening hear it and feel it too?
Each of these words, these phrases — they’re doorways. Doorways people have already walked through.
My kids are independent now.
I’m going through perimenopause.
My two and a half year relationship just ended.
I changed my major.
I gave up parental rights to my child.
I used to have a lot of money and now I live paycheck to paycheck.
I thought they were my friend.
I just moved into town.
I haven’t seen my kids in two years.
I was fired.
I don’t feel safe anymore.
Do I start dating again?
My girlfriend might break up with me.
I’m starting chemotherapy.
Each one holds a kind of grief that often goes unnamed. A crossing that changes someone forever. They’re quiet. Often unseen.
And the world keeps going.
There’s no funeral. No gathering. No space made to remember, to speak, to be held. No one brings food. No one gives you time.
You’re told:
It’s just a phase.
At least you have your health.
You’ll be better off.
It wasn’t right for you anyway.
You think that’s bad? Let me tell you about my life.
Most people move away from the discomfort. Or try to fix it.
In college, during finals week, my mom called to tell me my dog Fraiser died. I was with my friend Jenny, and I broke down in tears. I knew it was coming. He had congestive heart failure. Knowing didn’t make it easier. I spent every weekend at home with him after we learned about his prognosis. Twelve years of love and nuzzling noses since he was a puppy. That kind of bond doesn’t disappear. It changes form.
After I hung up the phone, I told Jenny the news, and she looked at me and said, “He was just a dog, Naomi.” She didn’t understand. She had never had a pet. But I had grown up with so many magical creatures. I knew what it meant when they left this earthly plane. To come home to silence. No tags jingling. No nails tapping across the floor. No soft sounds of them just being there.
That absence is loud.
When my bonus child left for the Navy, I felt both excitement and sadness. When I met him, he was ten. By nineteen, he was stepping into the world and starting a new life.
I remembered teaching him how to cook an egg. Eating the overcooked angel hair pasta he made that dissolved as soon as it touched our tongues. Trying to find dress pants long enough for his first homecoming dance.
So many firsts. So many moments.
After he left, the house was quiet. I cooked too much food. I would open the cupboard and laugh, then cry, remembering the time he used a whole cup of cinnamon in the cookie batter for science class.
I missed his presence. His laughter. The way his eyes lit up and his face crinkled when he smiled. The long conversations when it was just the two of us.
I never wanted kids. And still, I cracked open. I learned how much I could love. How much I had to let go. How much was never in my control.
Change is everywhere. All the time.
The page I’m writing on is no longer blank. Another doorway. Another crossing. Something has shifted just by being here. By writing this. By remembering.
Grief is everywhere.
It shapes us. Sits with us. Moves with us.
And if we let it, it changes us.