look mom, wings

there is a kind of love that does not leave when a person does.

it changes shape. it settles into memory, into instinct, into the way a family moves through the world. sometimes, with time, it can even feel deeper—not because the loss becomes easier, but because the love continues to grow around the absence. and sometimes that love finds us in small ways.

a feather drifting down at exactly the right moment. a song. a color. a butterfly. a sudden memory that feels less like remembering and more like being visited. maybe we have to be willing to notice those moments. maybe we have to leave a little space for the possibility that love is still reaching for us.

and maybe that is one of the strangest truths about grief: the person is gone, but the love is still alive. sometimes louder than ever.

for brittany. and for every family learning how to carry a love this enormous.

30×40 acrylic on canvas