Where the Light Waited

on loss, memory, and the places that still hold us

Some stories live quietly in us for a long time before they’re ready to rise. This one has lingered in the stillness, tucked beneath early spring light, grief that took its time, and the slow return to a place I hadn’t planned to revisit. It’s about loss, yes. But also memory. And the soft kind of strength that shows up when we finally let ourselves feel what we’ve been carrying.

Before the light returns, it often gathers in the edges, held just beyond the obvious.  It lingers in the corners of things. The stillness as a door swings shut, the shadow beside a stone wall, the curve of a familiar road you didn’t expect to take again.

You didn’t name it longing at the time. You just felt the pull. Quiet, persistent, gentle, and you followed.

It was late March. It was the kind of day when winter still held the air tightly, but something softer had begun to stir beneath the surface. Light filtered longer through the trees. Patches of snow had melted, giving way to the soft ground and small blooms pushing through the thawing ground.

You drove the road in silence. No music, no plan. Just the motion of the car, the ache in your chest, the sense that something old was rising. The cemetery came into view slowly, like it had been waiting, too. Time hadn’t changed it—the moss still clung to the crumbling stone wall, and the trees still stood leafless. The place knew how to keep quiet. It knew how to hold things.

The last time you stood there, the grief was too full to carry. There were casseroles and condolences, people who said all the right things. There you were, keeping your voice even while your heart was breaking. You weren’t trying to be strong. You were just surviving in a room that didn’t have much space for your own sorrow. This time, there was room. You gave yourself permission to fill it.

Your boots met gravel as you stepped out into the cold. The wind threaded itself through the branches above you, still bare but tipped with buds. You walked slowly. Each step forward felt like a return, not only to a place but to a part of you that had been waiting in silence.

The grave was where you remembered it. Third row. Beneath the branching tree. The name was still too sharp to see without flinching. You knelt anyway. That’s when you turned, not away, but toward what was true. You didn’t run from what rose. You didn’t distract or hold your breath or shrink. You let it come.

Grief arrived, not gently, not with restraint. The grief didn’t trickle. It broke sudden, full, and without apology. The kind of weeping that catches in the throat and folds the body forward. Not because the pain was new but because it had finally been given space to rise.

It had waited. Settled like silt at the bottom of a riverbed, quiet beneath everything else, until the silence let it arrive. 

She was more than your grandmother. She was a place of return, a voice of comfort. A steadying presence that made the world feel just a little less chaotic. To lose her was to lose a landmark. A compass point. Of course, you didn’t know how to be in the world without her, but you’re learning.

You stayed. You wept. You didn’t hide. Somewhere between the damp earth and the bare branches above you, something deeply true rose through the ache.

Grief, when named, becomes less frightening. It doesn’t shrink with time, it changes shape. It folds itself into the fabric of you. In doing so, it leaves space for what still wants to grow.

You stood up slowly. Boots muddy. Cheeks damp. Not healed. Not done. But softened. A little more rooted. A little more ready to carry what once felt impossible. This is how it begins again. 

Grief does not ask for resolution. It asks for presence. It hides in the chest like a seed, waiting for the season to shift, and when the time is right, when the light begins to return and the ground beneath you softens, it blooms. Not to undo you, but to remind you what you loved and who you still are.

Let this be the place you remember strength within.

Grief has roots. So do you, and the light as dim as it might be sometimes, that light is always waiting.

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Kindling: A flicker of thought. A small moment waiting to catch light. A place to begin, not to rush past, but to rest within. This ember is here for pausing for warming your thinking, your noticing, your remembering.

Today’s Kindling is drawn from Where the Light Waited—a quiet ember from the heart of the story.

Return to a place that holds memory. Let it rise gently, without forcing. What ache have you tucked beneath the surface? What truth wants to rise in the silence? Write to the version of you who wasn’t ready then but came back anyway. Let her know she was brave. Let her know the light was never gone, only gathering.

Write from that place.

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If something surfaced as you sat with these words, you’re gently invited to share in the comments. A line, a memory, a quiet noticing—only if it feels right. There’s space here.