Eleven years ago this month, I lost my dad to suicide. Normally I talk about it or him. This year I let the day pass in silence because I felt that I didn’t have anything profound to say. And I really didn’t.

But it’s late (and it’s belated) and I’m thinking it’s weird that that’s so much of the way we understand grief. That in order for me to talk about it, I feel that it has to be “for” something, that there has to be a greater lesson.

Sometimes there isn’t a greater lesson— just a reminder that so many of us are carrying pain. Pain that we don’t feel that we have space or permission to share unless we can justify it for some greater end. Forget the fact that most grief has no great end.

I’ve thought a lot this year about how long eleven years is and how much every aspect of my life has changed. How that means that there are people I hold fiercely close who may not even know that this is something I carry.

And I’ve thought about how I’m grateful for the grace of these people, who may look at me on an ordinary afternoon in April and note that something feels off, who don’t pry but create space for imperfection or sadness or silence about what they can’t quite figure out is going on.

ANYWAY, I feel myself trying to force a lesson in all of this where I have already said I feel sure there is none right now, so I want to stop. The bottom line is that grief is raw and empty and complicated and it’s okay if some days/months/years that is all that it is.

I am okay. I am continuing to grow and grieve, and it’s strange to be another year older in that process. It’s strange to know that this is not something I can make into a lesson, tie a bow on, and be healed from. But as much as anyone could be in this context, I’m okay.