Grief as a Permanent Companion and the process of grief

Grief isn’t what people say it is.

It isn’t neat stages you tidy up like chapters in a self-help book. It isn’t a clean process where you graduate from denial to acceptance, as though it were a ladder you climb. That’s the version people tell because it’s easier — because it makes everyone else more comfortable.

The truth is far messier. Grief doesn’t disappear. It reshapes you, tethers itself to everything you do, and follows you like a shadow you didn’t choose.

That’s what I wrote about in Chapter Three of The 6:8:1 Method. I called it Grief as a Permanent Companion — because that’s what it feels like.

The Suitcase

Real grief feels like being handcuffed to a suitcase you never asked to carry.

In the beginning, it’s unbearable. It bangs into doorframes, trips you up in the kitchen, interrupts you when you’re trying to shower. Everything is harder, heavier. People notice. They say things like “poor you” and sometimes they offer to carry it — but the cuffs make that impossible.

A few even suggest you just put it down, as if you hadn’t thought of that. As if you chose it - this is the process of grief.

Over time, though, you learn. You figure out how to shift your body sideways through narrow spaces. You learn how to sleep with it beside you. Eventually, you even get brief stretches where you don’t notice the weight at all.

And that’s usually when people stop seeing it. They say, “you’re doing so well” — as if the suitcase has magically vanished. But it hasn’t. You’ve just learned how to carry it without dropping it constantly.

Until one day — out of nowhere — a song, a smell, or a photograph makes the lock burst open. And the contents spill everywhere, all over the floor. Suddenly you’re back where you started. That’s grief. It never ends. You don’t get rid of it. You just learn how to live alongside it.

The Strangest Kind of Grief

No one prepares you for the grief that comes while someone is still alive.

When my dad had his strokes, I started mourning him even as I was holding his hand.

I grieved the sound of his laugh. His independence. His dignity. Moments that used to define us: Christmas dinners, the way he asked about my studies, late-night conversations about music. Each of those slipped away, quietly, one by one.

They became tiny funerals no one else attended. I kept smiling at him, saying “it’s okay, Dad, we’re okay.” But inside, I was already mourning the man who had been my anchor.

Grieving Yourself and the Process of Grief

The part people don’t talk about — the part that makes them uncomfortable — is that grief isn’t just about losing others. You grieve yourself, too.

I grieved my twenties, a decade that disappeared into caregiving instead of career-building or self-discovery. I grieved the teacher I was becoming. The singer I thought I might be. The version of me who could show up for her friends without rearranging her life. The daughter who could just be a daughter instead of a full-time carer, advocate, lifeline.

Sometimes late at night, I’d catch sight of that girl in the mirror — the one I might have been. And I hated her. I envied her. I missed her most of all.

The Grief Nobody Names

There are no sympathy cards for the life you never got to live.

When my dad eventually passed, people treated it like the beginning of my grief. What they couldn’t see was that it was the next chapter in something I’d been living for years.

And yes, there was relief, because his pain was finally over. But there was guilt too — guilt for keeping him alive so long, only to be left staring into silence when he was gone.

That’s the cruel logic of grief: it doesn’t play fair. It tangles contradictions — relief with guilt, love with resentment, gratitude with hollow loss.

Eight Years On

Now it’s been eight years. The suitcase is still here. I’ve strapped some stickers to it, patched up the corners. I’ve built muscles to carry it better.

Some days that weight feels unbearable again. Other days, I can even feel grateful for the suitcase, because it keeps me tethered to him, and to the love that survived everything.

What I’ve learned is this: grief doesn’t get lighter. We just get stronger. Until we don’t. And that’s okay, too.

Grief isn’t a puzzle to solve. It’s a reality you learn to honour.

If You’re Carrying One Too

Here’s the thing: we’re all carrying suitcases. Some are obvious. Some are invisible. Some are so heavy no one dares ask about them.

So maybe ask yourself: what grief are you carrying that you’ve never spoken out loud? Naming it matters.

That’s one of the reasons I wrote The 6:8:1 Method — not as glossy self-help, but as an honest record of survival tools I built while living through years like these. I created a companion journal too, so you can work through your own grief and healing at your own pace.

You’ll find both at arroemurphy.com or on Amazon.

Because grief doesn’t end. But we don’t have to carry it alone.