The Things We Carry
Someone recently told me that I have a great laugh.
It was meant as a compliment, and it was a lovely thing to hear. What surprised me was the emotion it brought up. For a moment, I felt completely knocked off center because the first person I thought about was my friend Jessica.
Jessica had the best laugh.
She loved to laugh. She found humor everywhere, and some of my favorite memories are simply moments of laughing together until neither of us could breathe. Even now, years later, I can still hear it.
What struck me in that moment was not the compliment itself, but where it took me. It made me think about the things we carry with us after someone we love is gone.
When we lose someone, especially in the early stages of grief, it is natural to focus on what has been lost. We miss their presence, their voice, their texts, their phone calls, and the comfort of knowing they are just a part of our everyday lives. The loss feels so large that it can be difficult to see anything beyond it.
Over time, however, something begins to shift. The grief does not disappear, but the fog starts to lift. As it does, we begin to notice that while we have lost someone we love, we have also been given something that remains.
We carry pieces of them with us.
Sometimes it is a laugh. Sometimes it is a favorite saying that unexpectedly comes out of our own mouth. Sometimes it is a recipe, a tradition, a song, or a particular way of looking at the world. And sometimes it is something so small we almost miss it—a gesture, a habit, or a way of showing up for others that we learned from them without ever realizing it.
The older I get, the more I appreciate that the people we love leave more behind than memories. They leave fingerprints on our lives.
Their laughter becomes part of our laughter. Their wisdom becomes part of our decisions. Their kindness becomes part of how we care for others. In ways both large and small, they continue shaping us long after they are gone.
That realization has become one of the gifts hidden within grief. Not immediately, and certainly not when the loss is fresh and overwhelming. But eventually, many of us come to see that love does not disappear when someone dies. It changes form.
The people we love continue to travel with us through the stories we tell, the traditions we keep, and the parts of them that have become part of who we are.
Perhaps that is also a reminder to pay attention to the moments we are living right now. The conversations, the traditions, the inside jokes, and the ordinary days that do not seem significant at the time.
Because one day, those may become the very things someone carries forward.
