Growing up, I used to think grief had a shape. For me, it looked like the old leather chair my mom always sat in with a book after dinner, reading until her eyelids grew heavy. It looked like the chipped mug with faded flowers that she insisted on keeping, even though the handle was cracked.
It looked like the laugh lines carved deeper around her mouth whenever she sang along to Sade records while cooking Sunday dinner. But at 30, I’ve learned grief doesn’t have a shape, it has a space. It’s the absence that fills every room, the silence where someone’s voice used to be.
Sometimes, someone else tries to move into that space and redecorate it, as if grief is a room you can paint over. My name is Laurel. I live about twenty minutes from the house I grew up in.
Close enough to stop by, far enough that I don’t have to sit in its emptiness every day. I work in marketing, share an apartment with my rescue dog, Coco, and drink my coffee black ever since Mom passed; that’s how she liked hers. It’s a small way of keeping her near, a little rebellion against forgetting.
My younger sister, Callie, is 16. She still lives with our dad, Martin. He used to be the kind of man who whistled in the mornings, who sang loudly and off-key on road trips, who made terrible pancakes every Sunday.
But after Mom’s d.e.a..th, he drifted away from us, like someone cut the anchor that held him steady. And then, only six months after the funeral, he remarried. Her name is Serena.
She’s 35, polished in a way that feels manufactured: smooth skin, perfect hair, clothes that look like they belong in glossy magazines. She gives the impression of someone who drinks green smoothies, spends mornings at Pilates, and treats emotions like they’re stains to be scrubbed out. From the moment she moved in, it was like Mom’s presence was erased.
The family portraits disappeared from the walls. The quilt Mom had hand-sewn for the living room couch vanished without explanation. Every framed picture of her was shoved into a cardboard box and dumped in Callie’s room, as if they were just sentimental clutter nobody wanted on display.
One afternoon, about a month after Serena arrived, she stood in the living room with her arms crossed, looking at the walls like she was assessing property value. “These family portraits really need to go,” she said lightly, as if it were about nothing more than redecorating. “The vibe is too depressing.
This house needs fresh energy.”
Callie stayed silent that day, but the words cut her. I knew, because a week later she whispered to me over bubble tea, her eyes fixed on the tapioca pearls sinking in her cup:
“It’s like Mom never existed to them. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I belong here anymore.”
My heart cracked.
She was still just a teenager, barely holding onto her identity, and now she was being erased along with Mom. Then came the announcement that sealed everything. Serena was pregnant.
With twins. Dad beamed at the sonogram like he’d hit the jackpot. Serena smiled like she’d just won a competition.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
