Okay, well… the way things are going, we’re still not circling back to the Change Series just yet. If I’m going to tell that story properly—especially the part between the Army and civilian life—I need more time to flesh it out. I rushed past too much in the first two parts. Important stuff got glossed over, and I don’t want to half-ass it like a last-minute group project in Psych 101.

Since I started re-blogging and digging into the past, more details from those chaotic two years have started resurfacing. Not forgotten things, exactly—more like scattered bits that got buried under all the emotional rubble. Grief is like that. It doesn’t just knock politely and follow a linear path like a package from Amazon. It busts down the door, then gets distracted halfway in, loops back around, and leaves a flaming bag of memories on your porch.

Even Kübler-Ross, who gave us the five “neat” stages of grief, said it’s not linear. She also said it sucks—maybe not in those exact words, but the vibe was there. And no matter how educated or experienced you are, nothing prepares you for actually living it. Grief isn’t just about death or illness either. It hits whenever something meaningful ends—and you have about as much control over it as you do over a toddler with a glitter cannon.

Here’s one of the sneakier, weirder things about grief: those random moments that slap you across the face. You see something, hear something, remember something, and your first instinct is, “Oh, I should tell him about this,” immediately followed by, “Oh yeah. He’s dead.”

It happened just yesterday. I saw that Chef Anne Burrell had died. She was a staple of the Food Network, known for “Worst Cooks in America” and “Secrets of a Restaurant Chef.” Sassy. Knowledgeable. Flamboyant as hell. He would’ve loved that. My first thought was to send him the link. Then I remembered: he’s also dead. Great. Now I’m two-for-one on losses.

Another time was last year in Montana. I hadn’t been back to Butte since maybe 2017 or 2018. It had changed more than I expected—especially Montana Tech and its nursing department. I wandered through and saw this beautifully overhauled setup: new classrooms, simulation labs better than anything I’d seen even at places like the University of Utah. It was sleek, smart, and absolutely nothing like the cramped little corner we had back in the day. I left the building and thought, “He’d love to see how far the program’s come.” Then it hit: Right. Not gonna happen. Dead.

Those little gut punches happen more than I care to admit. The weirdest part isn’t even the grief. It’s the shared memories that now feel orphaned. You realize that no one else really understands what you’re referencing. No one else was there. You end up overexplaining to people who love you but don’t have the context—and honestly, it’s exhausting for both sides.

To my close friends: thank you for tolerating my grief-splaining.

It raises a bigger question, though: Does this ever end? Probably not. Maybe it dulls, but it never really disappears. Shared experiences are stitched into the fabric of who you are, and when the other half of that memory is gone, it’s like listening to a duet with one mic cut out.

The thing is, even when those moments hit, I don’t always feel sad. I just feel… odd. Not numb, not crushed, just a little sideways. Maybe that’s some weird variation of denial, though it doesn’t feel like it. If anything, it’s closer to gratitude. Like, “Oh yeah. We did that.”

I’ve said for a while now that grief is a lifelong process. And frankly, I wish it weren’t. I still wish my dogs were here—not just in memories, but in flesh and fur. I wish my mom was still around. I miss friends and family who are gone. But with him? That sadness never came. Not really.

I used to think I was grieving “wrong.” Not because anyone said so—no one judged me, no one tried to “fix” it. I just felt off-script. Every therapist and psychiatrist I saw told me the same thing: you grieve how you grieve. But that didn’t stop the voice in my head that said I was doing it badly.

Blame it on generational programming. I grew up with these church ladies who, after losing a husband, basically dressed for a Gothic funeral until they died themselves. Pearls, black veil, the works. You never heard a single bad word about the deceased. The whole “don’t speak ill of the dead” thing was practically doctrine.

I think that expectation seeped into me more than I realized. I wasn’t wearing a black veil, but I was trying to pass for “normal,” and I went back to work way too soon after the suicide. I threw myself into distraction, because admitting I wasn’t sad was unthinkable. But it was true. I was grieving something—the rupture, the years of trying, the loss of what might have been—but I wasn’t sad that he was gone.

And that rubbed up hard against everything I was taught.

In hindsight? I’m sad for him. I’m sad for the people who loved him deeply and now carry that loss. I’m sad for his potential, for his intelligence, for the people who believed in him and were let down. I’m sad for the versions of ourselves that we once were—before life got so complicated and ugly.

But I’m not sad he’s gone.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe grief doesn’t always wear black or cry in corners. Maybe sometimes it just sighs, shrugs, and says, “Well, shit.”

So no matter what chapter you’re in, remember this: Be the kind of person your dog and your mom hope you are.