After Everything

 Originally published in Crow's Feet: Life As We Age on Medium.

Grief and hope

When my husband, David, was diagnosed with ALS, the grief began the moment we heard the words. Grief for the life we knew.

I wanted to rewind time, back just one week to when life felt ordinary. Normal. But that normal had quietly slipped away long before the diagnosis. There had been signs. We noticed small things; he knew something was off. But we never imagined ALS.

We’re a baseball family. We know Lou Gehrig and his story and we knew exactly what an ALS diagnosis meant.

Heartbreak came in waves: telling the boys, sharing the news with family and friends, facing the reality that time was limited.

Truth can be brutal and it was. There was more to do. More fishing. More time with our sons. More baseball games to watch.

Terminal illness is a decision your body makes without your permission and life handed us a crash course in powerlessness. ALS leaves no room for planning or pivots; it’s not the kind of change you get to choose. And watching someone you love slowly lose the ability to speak or swallow is a visceral kind of helplessness. Some days, I could sit with the discomfort. Other days, it was a struggle.

This grief was new to me and cracked me open. Life suddenly felt fragile. It forced me to face my own mortality and question what really mattered.

In the months after his passing, I poured my energy into our boys, my work, and holding it all together. A handful of times, I dreamed David was alive. Those dreams left me breathless. They felt real. I felt guilty for living, for trying new things, for daring to step into a life that didn't include him. Eventually the dreams stopped.

But I’m not the same. Life is not the same. And that’s okay.

Somewhere in the middle of learning to live with massive change and an uncertain future, I discovered life coaching. It didn’t erase the pain and discomfort of the time, but it helped me reframe my circumstances. It helped me untangle my thoughts, release regret, and reconnect with my purpose.

I learned I could honor the past without losing myself in it, not let the past define the future, and, possibly the most important realization, that joy doesn’t hinge on some magical, elusive moment; it’s something we can choose to cultivate now and at any stage of life.

What I know now is this:

That there’s room for both grief and joy.
For tears and laughter.
For honoring old memories while creating new ones.
You are allowed to change.
You are allowed to feel joy, even after deep loss.
And you are allowed to create a future that looks nothing like the past while still loving all the people and places that got you here.

We don’t always get to choose what breaks us, but we can decide what we build from it, at any age, in whatever time we have.

Beyond loss lies possibility. Let's explore it together.