There is a certain kind of grief that arrives quietly.
Not the grief that comes in hospital rooms, at funerals, or during those first terrible weeks when everyone understands that your world has changed.
I mean the grief that waits.
It waits until you are standing outside a church at a wedding, watching a five-year-old girl in a pink dress twirl across the parking lot because she loves the sound her shiny shoes make against the pavement.
And then, without warning, it hits you.
Phoebe should have been there.
She would have straightened Margot’s dress.
She would have taken far too many photographs.
She probably would have disappeared into the bathroom for ten minutes to cry because her daughter looked beautiful and she felt overwhelmed by gratitude.
But Phoebe wasn’t there.
She would never be there again.
Three years had passed since I buried my daughter, and I had learned not to fight those moments anymore.
You let the grief arrive.
You feel it.
Then you look down at the little girl standing beside you and remember why you still have to remain present.
Margot had been giving me reasons to stay present since the day she was born.
At five years old, she also had very strong opinions about footwear.
“These are the best ones,” she informed me that morning, holding up a pair of shiny black shoes with tiny buckles. “They make a good sound.”
“They certainly do.”
“I’m going to be in Daddy’s pictures today.”
“You are.”
She looked at me seriously.
“Daddy said so.”
“Then Daddy said so.”
She had been excited about the wedding for two weeks.
She told neighbors.
She told the woman at the dry cleaner.
She even stopped once to tell a neighbor’s dog that she was going to be in her father’s wedding photographs.
That morning, her entire world seemed bright.
And then someone took part of that brightness away.
Margot is my granddaughter.
She is Phoebe’s daughter.
Which means, to me, she is proof that my daughter was once here, that she loved, that she created a life, and that some piece of her remained in this world.
Margot has Phoebe’s eyes.
Exactly.
