The Hardest Chapter

Finding the End of Loss

Tonight, I finished the hardest chapter of my book, the last chapter of loss.The loss of my mom.

For months, I’ve tried to write it. I’d sit staring at my laptop... feeling the weight of everything I hadn’t yet said.

And then, out of nowhere, a TV show did what I couldn’t do for months, it cracked something open.

The show touched on both my mom and dad in the same hour. Two very different losses, two very different relationships, yet there they were, side by side... just like they are in my memory.

One scene showed a daughter having the hardest conversation of her life with her father, finally telling him how much she’d always needed his approval and how she never quite got it. Watching her, I saw myself. The ache of wanting to fix that connection with my dad for years, of trying to understand why love sometimes hurt so much and was such a struggle to maintain.

And then came another scene... a son watching his mother choose peace over the long, slow battle of dementia. He fought her choice, begged her not to give up. But when she took the pill that would end her life and slipped away peacefully, he broke open completely. And again, there I was, seeing myself, sitting beside my mom, holding her hand as she left this world in calm and love.

Something in that strange mix of storylines unlocked me.

Before I knew it, I was typing. Writing, sobbing, gasping for air between tears. Reliving the final days of her life... the stillness, the tenderness, the impossible beauty of goodbye.

When the words finally stopped, the chapter was done.

I sat on the floor, crying into my dog Denali’s fur, her patient little face soaking up every tear. And in that moment, I wanted so badly to call a friend... not my lifelong friend Michelle, or my best friend here, Crystall... but him. My male friend. The one I feel more for than I’ve admitted.

I didn’t want to talk about death. I didn’t want to explain. I just wanted to hear his voice. But it was late in Ontario, and maybe I was scared... scared to be that vulnerable, scared to reach out from such a raw place. So I didn’t.

Tomorrow, I’m hiking.

Today I hiked with Crystall, it was awesome as always, grounding, full of laughter and light. But tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I’m taking on a climb that’s big and hard and beautiful. One of those hikes that taxes your body but gives something back to your soul.

I think I need that.

I think I need to climb toward the ending, not just of the chapter, but of the kind of grief that’s been holding me still. Maybe tomorrow’s trail will show me what comes after loss, that strange, complicated place where love still lives, even when the people we love are gone.

Because maybe that’s the truth I’ve been trying to write all along:

Death breaks us open, yes... but love is what pours out.