What Nobody Tells You About the First Month

Or what grief looks like for me today

Someone should really prepare you for this part.

Not the immediate aftermath when everything is surreal chaos. Not the strange limbo of waiting for the death certificate to arrive.

I’m talking about week three. Week four. Everyone else’s life has resumed its normal rhythm. But yours is still stuck in some kind of underwater version of reality.

My dad died exactly one month ago today. I thought I knew what to expect.

Turns out losing a parent is nothing like any grief I’ve experienced before.

Time does the weirdest things

Here’s what nobody tells you: time doesn’t move forward after this kind of loss. It moves sideways. Sometimes backward. Occasionally it doesn’t move at all.

You have moments where you forget entirely. You reach for your phone to text them about something they’d find funny. Three full seconds pass before the reality slams back in, and you feel like an idiot. How could you forget?

Other times you’re so acutely aware of their absence, the weight of it makes your chest physically hurt. You’re in the middle of something completely mundane (unloading the dishwasher, answering an email, cutting your toenails) and the reality hits you fresh.

Dad’s not here. He’ll never be here again.

Your brain will try to make deals it can’t keep

I keep catching myself doing this thing where I mentally try to postpone my grief.

“I’ll really process this after I finish this deadline.”

“I’ll deal with these feelings once we have the memorial.”

“I’ll make space for this later.”

As if grief will politely wait until you have your calendar cleared and a box of tissues ready and the perfect therapist on speed dial.

Spoiler: it does not wait.

It shows up at 2 PM on a Tuesday when you’re trying to write a scene about your detective solving a murder. It arrives during a conversation with a friend about nothing important. It crashes your morning ritual and your evening TV time and the moment when you’re brushing your teeth and catch your own eyes in the mirror.

Grief doesn’t care about your schedule. Which is ironic, because my dad’s illness and sudden loss completely knocked me off mine.

“But I’ve done grief before”

I have. I really have.

I’ve lost people I loved. I’ve felt the hollow ache, navigated the early weeks, learned how to carry loss and keep living. I thought I had a map for this territory.

And maybe I do have a map. But it’s a map of a completely different country.

Losing a parent isn’t just “more grief” or “bigger grief.” It’s an entirely different species of loss. It’s the person who was always there, even before you existed, suddenly not there anymore. Parenthood, even from the child’s side, runs so deep that losing Dad has carved out new spaces inside me I didn’t know existed.

Your relationship with them changes but doesn’t end

This might be the most disorienting part.

He’s gone. Physically, actually, permanently gone. I know this. The evidence is overwhelming.

And yet.

I still think about what he’d say about various situations. When I figure something out or solve a problem or think of a creative solution, part of my brain still wants to tell him about it.

He was proud of me. Of my writing career, my books, all of it. He wasn’t a reader himself, but he was so proud. He was constantly sending links to my books and my website to his friends and contacts, letting them know about my publishing journey. And somehow that pride is still... here? Still real…even though he isn’t here. Still a thing I can feel and draw strength from.

I don’t know how that works. How someone can be completely absent and still somehow present. But it’s happening, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

This is what the first month actually is

It’s not healing. Let’s be clear about that.

It’s not finding closure or reaching acceptance or arriving at peace. It’s not successfully processing your feelings or completing any kind of emotional arc.

It’s survival. It’s waking up every day and figuring out how to exist in a world that suddenly has a person-shaped hole in it. It’s doing the laundry and answering emails and sometimes even writing a few pages, not because you feel better, but because the world keeps requiring things from you regardless of your grief.

It’s crying in the kitchen. It’s having one good hour followed by three terrible ones. It’s texting friends back with “I’m okay” when you’re definitely not, because explaining the truth feels like too many words.

It’s also laughing at something funny and then feeling guilty for laughing. It’s having moments of genuine peace followed immediately by waves of sorrow. It’s both missing him desperately and feeling him somehow close at the same time.

The first month is a mess. There’s no other word for it.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe the mess is exactly what it’s supposed to be.

Mostly I’m learning that there’s no right way to do this. No timeline. No checklist. No moment where you suddenly graduate from “grieving person” back to “regular person.”

You just keep going. You keep writing, keep working, keep existing. Some days that feels like strength. Other days it just feels like Wednesday.

Both are fine.

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So here’s my question for you: If you’ve been through grief, what surprised you most about those early weeks? What did you wish someone had told you? I’m still figuring this out, and I’d love to hear your experiences.

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