When my father joined the ancestors in April 2025, I felt ready to embrace grief in all its stages.
Denial passed quickly. Dad was nearly 92 years old, and I was there at his bedside to see him transition. I was able to say my final goodbyes. There was no unfinished business between us. What more could I ask?
Anger and bargaining double-teamed me. What if I had kept him more active? What if we had continued our joint workouts? I had become too weak to keep them going. Well, COPD has a way of doing that. Eventually, those questions passed too.
Next came depression. At first, I thought it was regular exhaustion, but it was more than that. I was missing his laughter. His wisdom. His smile. His voice.
I missed him.
All the way up to the minute I got a breast cancer diagnosis. That's when I snapped out of it because, in my mind, depression is antithetical to healing. I had something new demanding my attention, my energy, and my will to live.
Acceptance stepped right up and pushed everything else aside.
He was here. He lived well. And now he's gone.
But there was one form of grief happening beneath the surface that nearly escaped me. I didn't recognize it until yesterday.
As soon as Dad passed, I went through his room and began clearing things out. At the time, I told myself I was reclaiming my space. On the very first day, I worked until I fell unconscious across his bed. And I have been sleeping there ever since.
What was it that called me into his room and away from my own comfy bed? I know now. It was grief.
Not the grief I had read about. Not denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance. This grief didn't announce itself. It didn't cry. It didn't rage. It didn't ask me to make sense of anything.
It simply climbed into my father's bed. And stayed. And me with it.
For eighteen months, I slept in the room where he had slept. His bed was bigger and firmer and, truth be told, less taxing on my back. His closet was spacious enough to hold most of my clothes. I cleared and rearranged and slowly made the room useful to me. I even created plenty of Burn & Brew moments there. But it wasn't mine.
No matter how comfortable the bed became, it wasn't mine. No matter how many clothes I moved into the closet, it wasn't mine.
No matter how much of myself I carried into that room, something in me knew I was still sleeping in Dad's room. And maybe that was exactly what I needed.
Maybe grief doesn't always ask us to let go immediately. Maybe sometimes it asks us to stay close for a while. To sleep where they slept. To touch what they touched. To let the body understand something the mind has already accepted.
Then, within the last couple of days, something shifted.
There was no ceremony. No announcement from the ancestors. No dramatic revelation. I simply wanted my bedroom back.
The one with my altar. The fluffy bed linens. The familiar things arranged the way I like them. The door that leads directly into my master bath. My room.
So after eighteen months, like the big girl I am, I found my way back to my own bedroom.
And then I counted the months.
Eighteen.
One plus eight makes nine.
Nine—the number of completion, culmination, release, and the closing of a cycle.
Not the completion of my grief. I don't believe grief works that way. But perhaps nine marked the completion of something grief had asked me to do.
For eighteen months, some part of me needed to sleep where my father had slept. And when that work was finished, I didn't have to force myself to leave. I simply went home.
Then I looked toward the sky. The Cancer Last Quarter Moon was approaching.
Cancer. My own Sun sign. The keeper of home, family, memory, ancestry, emotional security, and the places we retreat when we need to feel safe. I couldn't help noticing the timing.
Eighteen months had reduced itself to nine, the number of completion, and now a Cancer moon of release was arriving just as I was leaving my father's room.
Maybe none of it caused anything. It didn't need to. For me, the meaning was in the correspondence.
My body had apparently completed something before my mind even knew there was something to complete.
I hadn't performed a ritual to leave Dad's room. I hadn't chosen a significant date. I hadn't stood at my altar and declared that it was finally time to move on.
One day, I simply wanted my own bed again. And perhaps that was the ritual. Grief had taken me into my father's room. Eighteen months later, it gave me permission to leave. The Cancer moon could have the rest.
That's when I realized another stage of grieving had quietly ended.
The grief that held me in Dad's big, warm, comfy, cozy bed—the bed that still somehow smelled like his Ivory soap—had finally loosened its grip.
I didn't have to force myself out. I didn't have to declare that it was time to move on. I didn't have to pack away my memories or stop missing him. I simply became ready to go home.
And maybe that's another costume grief wears.
Sometimes grief looks like crying. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion, silence, keeping busy, telling stories, tending altars, talking to the ancestors, or making yourself a warm drink and sitting with what is. And sometimes grief looks like sleeping in your father's bed for eighteen months because some part of you isn't quite ready to leave.
Until one day, you are.
Dad's room is still there. His bed is still there. And he is still with me in all the ways that matter. But I don't need to sleep there anymore to feel close to him. His room is slowly becoming something else, though I can't say exactly what.
I am back beneath my own covers, beside my own altar, surrounded by the life that is still asking me to live it.
My grief isn't over. But this particular expression of it is complete.
Grief wears many different costumes. For eighteen months, it wore my father's room. Now, whatever it chooses to wear next will have to find me in mine.
I'm home.