Losing a loved one is a terrible way to arrive at not caring. It makes sense though. The worst has already happened. Whatever else happens in life can’t be this bad. I don’t care. The worst has already happened.

I don’t understand how I can both love and not care at the same time. Detach with love they said in all of those Al-anon meetings. Losing my daughter is a terrible way to arrive at not caring. But, here I am. Loving still and newly not caring.

I do care that once there was a little girl who brightened my days and taught me how to love. My relationship with my sisters is less than perfect. It was by watching Zoe trail after her sister with only love in her heart that I realized I must have been like that once. There is so much unhealed pain between us. Yet, once I was a toddler who trailed after my sisters loving them before I had words for what I felt. My daughter taught me that.

My grief is changing. For most of October I have had moments of sobbing each day. Deep, primal, despair for my loss – for all my losses. My grief is changing. Less thought. More feeling.

I have been doing all of the “things.” I took a grief class. I joined a grief support group for parents. I took a “writing your grief” class. I am doing all the “things.” My husband is doing nothing. We joke about it. Typical. I am running around doing all of the things. He is doing nothing.

That’s not entirely true, of course. He is witnessing my grief as I am witnessing his. “Emily would have loved this,” we say. “Zoe would have railed against this,” we say. Our grief is changing. We are changing – changed by the worst possible experience a parent could have. Our grief is changing. Our love is not.