Out-of-Timeline Grief

Some things in life come to us and disrupt our timelines: babies come early, flights arrive late, or a wedding present shows up a year late (hey, that's Ms. Manners-approved). But in grief, we rarely discuss the losses that are out of timeline.

I experienced this with the death of my older sister in 2021. We were six years apart, and this year I will turn the age she was when she passed.

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In-timeline losses are hard enough. Our grandparents pass, a family pet has to be put down, or perhaps your parents die when you are an adult. But when a person who was meant to walk the journey of life with you—taking your shit and exchanging side-eyed glances—ups and leaves right in the middle of your life's narrative, you are often left gobsmacked, turned around, and experiencing an extra layer of grief on top of grief.

With these out-of-timeline losses, you are often left dealing with milestones in your life without your person, and that feeling of isolation on top of grief can easily get swept under the radar.

I often use wood grain to describe my grief, as I think nature offers metaphors that help us understand things better. When you look at the grain of wood, the circles represent the passage of time, and they usually appear quite uniform, building circle upon circle. But when a disruption happens to the tree—be it a drought or a fire—you can see it in the wood grain as a bend in the circle, a shift in the concentric lines.

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But much like grief, our story doesn't end there. Our adaptation is that we begin to build outward from, and with, that line of disruption.

Out-of-timeline grief is that curve in the wood grain's natural lines that changes the whole shape and trajectory of the tree's growth. My hope is we all learn to bend, and not break, around these losses and be patient enough with ourselves as we change around them.