Grief and Pink Skies

January 10, 2026

Grief is an emotion I really have been evaluating lately. I’ve lost a lot of people, even pets, in my lifetime.  I’ve lost family members; aunts, uncles, great grandparents, grandparents, parents, even an infant niece. And then friends and coworkers. Many of these losses happened just within the past 10 years or so. I feel starting with my mother who passed away in August 2015. I was in my late 30s and I can just remember thinking that no one should lose their mom when they’re in their 30s. I went through my mother’s dying of cancer for six months knowing. But prior to her diagnosis I knew she was very sick. I was also about to be a new mom and I did what I could to help. It was a lot. As the years have gone by and I’ve lost more and more people I really have started to assess the grieving process more with every loss. When my mother passed away, Joe was little. He was only about nine months. My parents were divorced, so my mother was single. It was basically me and my two older brothers who were handling her sickness and also her death. There really was no one else out there as far as family goes. All of her family had either passed already or were too far separated or far geographically to really be there for her. Her older brother, my uncle Gary, was there for her at the very end. He did see her a couple weeks before she passed away. And then he made it to the funeral from states and states away. They’re just weren’t many people close to my mom. As time had gone, and I’ve gained more family through marriage, through births, and also friendships, loss has started to blanket more people close to me. With my mother, I didn’t have to worry about the grief of my son. He was only 9 months and he had no idea what was going on. He doesn’t remember her. But as time went and people aged and people came and went, and I started seeing the grief in others, and how people deal with grief in very very different ways. When it came to my mother, my brothers and I grieved in ways that were really almost embarrassing. We didn’t really grieve, we celebrated. And I think because her death wasn’t sudden. By the time she passed, it was more of a relief because she was no longer suffering. The day after she passed,

me and my brothers were at the bank to start handling the financial end of things so we could start paying for her funeral. While me and my oldest brother standing at the counter, cracking jokes about our mom and what we were doing, my other brothers over stealing dumb dumbs out of a candy jar at someone’s desk. I know he really wasn’t stealing them, but it was funny for an adult to be over there taking candy from a jar! I just felt that the whole scene was comical and that people in the bank were probably like “what is wrong with these people?” But that’s how we handled that grief. We handled it through laughter. We tried to remember the good times and honestly the three days that we spent preparing her funeral and being at her funeral was very healing. Me and my brothers weren’t worried about much regarding it financially. There was no fighting about who gets what. There wasn’t anything to fight over so that made it easy.  There was no competition per se. We just all came together. We took care of what we needed to take care of. We laughed when we needed to. We didn’t speak when we needed to and we all kind of grieved similarly. That was just us. Then as time went, and I started losing other people, and I started seeing grief in other ways and in other lives and other people, and it really made me I realize that we grieve differently for everyone. Our grief isn’t always the same. The way I grieve or grieved for my mother was much different than the way I’ve grieved for my niece who had her life taken away from her when she was only six months. That was a whole other type of grief and I handled her death much much differently, which I guess you would expect to, but it wasn’t something I ever thought about until the loss was actually there. I lost a friend and coworker who was only 30 when he passed away. He was like a brother to me in the workforce and losing him was the hardest I’ve ever taken a loss. It was sudden. It was one of those where you get a phone call and you hear he’s gone and your brain immediately goes to this isn’t true he can be saved. How can it happen? How can we get him back! …and in that fleeting glimpse of thought of “no he’ll be Ok,” I also found the emotion of no. No, he’s gone. Three very different griefs. Three ways of my grief with three different people. So now, as I watch others grieve over people I realize that their grief is going to be different than mine and their grief for each person they lose is going to be different from the other. And I think I’ve realized or what has really come to top of mind as I’ve been evaluating the grieving process amongst myself and others, is that finding out how I need to allow people to grieve. There have been times where I felt like I wasn’t allowed to grieve and that was a lesson to me to make sure that I allow everyone around me to grieve in the ways that they need to. If you simply just hold it in and don’t talk about it, yes, I find that unhealthy, but if it’s how someone grieves, then allow it. And maybe someone loses it and falls apart and they let it all out and it’s sad and you don’t know how to react to that, but it needs to be allowed because that’s how they grieve. Some people may grieve by laughter like me and sharing the memories and talking  about it. I know that if that’s how someone is going to grieve, then we need to allow that. Some people will laugh and cry through their grief, and we should allow that. Some people need to disappear from us for a while in their grief, and we need to allow that. Some people may need our attention and love and touch and presence. We should honor that and allow that.

This message, that I really felt compelled to write, is simply allowing grief. Allowing yourself and others to grieve in your and their own ways and not expecting them to grieve like I do, we do, others do. Allowing us all to be unique and respecting that. This is growth, maturity, aging, acceptance and a peace that I’ve found with time and loss. Might be an “ah ha”moment for some, or a “yeah, I know” for others, or “I feel this” for some. But I hope that no matter how you see it, you understand.

And you allow it.

Yesterday I was chatting with my 11 year old son, Joe. As I glanced out his window, I saw the most stunning pink skies and I said "hey! look at those pink skies." and Joe looked out and remarked on how beautiful. And it made me think of the song by Zach Bryan, "Pink Skies". The song is a representation of loss in family. And the lyrics

The kids are in town for a funeral

so pack the car and dry your eyes

I know they got plenty of young blood left in em

and plenty of nights under pink skies

you taught them to enjoy

hit me like a ton of bricks. The timing and symbolism of all I've been working through was right there, reminding me to enjoy the pink skies and teach him how to as well.