Grief’s Hidden Door to Peace

How a sudden loss unlocked my hidden trauma

You never know how grief will appear. My first taste of it was when my grandfather died. He was in Oregon and I was in seminary in Tennessee, which spared me the agony of watching his prolonged suffering. He was eighty-four years old and had lived a long and good life.

I grieved for him when he died and regretted that I had not been there to say my goodbyes. I dreamed about him for several nights, but felt a certain peace, a strange confidence that he was, in whatever way that matters, with God. My grandfather had loved me, possibly more than anyone, and I knew he would never hold it against me that I wasn’t there at the end. He had only ever wanted what was best for me—not even death could change that.

When Milo died, it was different. I didn’t really know him that well, if I’m being honest. He was a fifteen-year-old boy and a student in my class. What I did know about him, I loved.

He was bright and enjoyed reading in class, although he vehemently denied it. He asked deeper questions about the content, which led me on wild deviations from the lesson plan, which was of course his intent from the start. He was good-natured, kind, and there wasn’t a student in the class that didn’t love him. He lived for baseball season, was popular, and an overall strong student.

Then, he died suddenly.

I heard the news at church. I had gone to drop off my son at a youth group activity. A former student met me in the lobby and as I picked up some sheet music to take home, he said, “You know, Milo died.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Milo died.”

I stared at him, unable to process.

“A bunch of kids went to the quarry to go swimming and he disappeared. They spent hours searching, but couldn’t find him.”

I pictured his round, blue eyes, his inquisitive face, and suddenly it was like the wind had been knocked out of me. I grabbed the back of a pew. The teenager suddenly covered his mouth, realizing he had said something wrong. He didn’t know Milo well; he was reporting an interesting fact. But I was reacting like the world was spinning out of control.

It was.

My mind was racing. The finality of it made it impossible to breathe. I would never see him again. He was gone. I couldn’t accept it; I refused to believe it. I imagined his mother and father, his brother—the magnitude of their loss. I cried for my own sons, imagining now with a strange painful clarity what losing them would look and feel like.

I had never known grief like this. It was a shock that ran through me, separating my mind from my body. I tossed and turned the entire night, praying this was a nightmare—that it wasn’t really true.

I went to school the next day. I don’t remember it well. There was a teachers’ meeting where the news was given to everyone by our principal. Milo had been swimming with friends and then just went under and never came back up. No one really knew why. Did he have a leg cramp? An aneurysm?

We would never know.

The other boys had spent hours diving under the water, but the quarry was too deep. Professional divers were called. His body was recovered hours later.

As the details surfaced, I replayed the scene over and over again, imagining the horror of those other boys diving in desperation to find Milo in the black water. I refused to accept that any of it was real.

I will wake up and this will just be a dream, I thought.

My face was so puffy I hardly recognized myself when I looked in the mirror. I splashed cold water on my face, but the tears seeped out of me. I didn’t feel them. My colleagues looked at me with concern. They took turns stepping into my classroom throughout the day to check on me and offer to cover my classes.

I didn’t feel sad, just disconnected. My body seemed to be doing the grieving while my mind remained permanently frozen. I had learned this before: our bodies grieve before the mind catches up.

As much as I cried over Milo, I was confused. I was grieving Milo as if he had been my own son. I grieved over him more than my own grandfather, who had been like a second father to me. Why?

I knew why, but I didn’t want to admit it.

Milo died only a year after I found out about my husband’s affair. His death highlighted what had already shifted inside of me. Before the collapse of my marriage, I used to feel invincible and protected, but now it felt like anything I loved could be stolen at any moment. Milo’s death was the proof that someone so beautiful, kind, and full of life could be taken without warning, without reason. It was an in-the-flesh reminder of the life that had been stolen from me—a reminder that I was still vulnerable, that I would never be safe.

I hated that my grief was so much about my own trauma, but I knew it was true. I had come out of my broken marriage raw. I was no longer the same woman I had been. Living life in this raw state was frightening. I felt out of control; my emotions were driving and I was along for the ride. But the ride was taking me somewhere important—into the reality that our lives are inexpressibly fragile.

As I sat in a room of teachers, I tried to understand why I felt ashamed. Most of the other teachers, except a few of us, were able to keep their decorum. They were holding it together. I was ugly-crying, my face so puffy I was nearly unrecognizable, a box of deconstructed tissues crumpled next to me. They were the strong ones and I was the weak one.

Debby, be more professional. Hold it together, I thought. My inner voice was powerless against the weight of my grief.

My principal came into my room later during the day. “If there’s anything I can do,” he said softly, “you just ask.” I thanked him, genuinely touched by his kindness. There was nothing I could think of for him to do.

I went home later that night and tried to watch Netflix, but really I was wondering why my grief had made me so ashamed. Why did it feel like weakness?

The next day, the grief counselors came. I did something I’ve never done before. I left my class with the substitute and went to the grief room with my students. I didn’t hesitate. I colored and pet a therapy dog. I shared and listened to memories of Milo with my students. I learned things about him I had never known before.

Something had shifted again.

As I stroked the soft fur of a yellow golden retriever and felt his wet nose graze and then sit in the palm of my hand, I took a breath. The room, the students beside me—everything felt painfully real, fully alive. I was fully present in the moment, because in that room I had brought no one else but me.

In the grief, I didn’t have to talk, I didn’t have to do anything; I could just be. I felt the still weight of his furry head against my knee.

Was it so terrible that my divorce had trained my body to wear its heart on its sleeve?

Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. I was a certified mess, and I would be a mess again. No one could deny it.

But I had masked everything beneath responsibility, work, efficiency, and professionalism. I had buried everything without even a funeral. Now I was tracing an image of Dory from Finding Nemo with a blue colored pencil, occasionally blotting my wet face with crumpled tissues, my other hand buried in the dog’s soft fur.

This was the first moment I could remember sitting in a room and masking nothing. I felt no need to talk, no need to perform—just to be present.

It was not grief.

It was relief.

Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.