The Limit of Grief: What It Cost Me
After twelve years sitting with people in their final days, I finally understood grief’s true cost. Not the obvious tears or the hollow ache. The hidden cost: the space I gave up inside myself.
I learned to hold others’ sorrow without flinching. I’d sit with Mrs. Chen as she whispered about her son, her hands trembling on the sheet. I’d listen to Mr. Evans recount his life, his voice fading like a radio signal. I became a vessel for their pain. But in that act of holding, I stopped holding my own.
I gave up the right to be messy. To not be okay. When my own father died, I was in the hospice office, helping a family choose a funeral program. I didn’t cry. I didn’t call my sister. I just kept moving, because the weight of others’ grief had become my default. I missed my son’s graduation. I let my own grief harden into something I could manage, not something I could feel.
What did I gain? A quiet understanding. I learned that grief isn’t a problem to solve—it’s a landscape to walk through. I saw how people find grace in the smallest moments: a dog nuzzling a hand, the way light falls on a pillow. I learned that presence is the only gift that truly matters. That’s the sacred thing I carry now.
Was it worth it? Yes. But not without cost. The cost was my own softness. The cost was the years I spent learning to hold others’ pain while my own remained unheld. I still carry that space—empty, but shaped by what I let go.
It’s okay to not be okay. What if we just... sat with that for a moment? The limit of grief isn’t the depth of the sorrow. It’s the space we leave behind when we choose to hold it for someone else.
— Kyle Smith, sitting with what's hard
Written by Kyle Smith — 12:25, 14 January 2026 (CST)