03/26/2026
A lot of people talk about how grief changes you…Especially the profound grief that comes from the intense and tragic loss of someone very close…How you’re not the same person that you were before, and you never will be again…How that loss takes with it so many things that you once knew— love, affection, familiarity, hope, security, and faith, all while snatching up the trajectory of life and tying it into a complex, unsolvable knot…It alters your mindset about what’s important and leaves you not giving a s**t about things that the vast majority of the world does…
People also talk about how grief changes over time…We used to talk a lot about those “stages of grief”, and now anybody who knows anything about it knows that it’s not as simple as that at all…Grief is neverending, always-evolving, surprising, and not something you ever “get over”…For most people the time and space around grief is what makes it more manageable, allowing them to proceed with life after the catastrophic shock, illogical denial, uncontrollable anger, impossible bargaining, enveloping depression, and tenuous testing of trying to figure out how to move forward with life, somehow leads to a somewhat-mythical land of “acceptance.”
Now having been through what I think are arguably two pretty intense losses of my children, three years and one year and change ago, with a couple more slated in the future, I would say that there is a hell of a lot of truth to that whole idea of it changing an individual… I don’t think I am remotely close to the same person that I was before in a lot of ways…Outside of how I’ve had to adjust to immeasurable absences and how I’ve had to alter my life, I have been pondering lately about how I’ve had to CHANGE my GRIEF, something that is an entirely different thing that I don’t think people talk much about…
Because I lost two children in similar manners and relatively close ages, who had similar interests and were each other‘s best friend, the way that I initially grieved Gianna and Giacomo actually looked oddly familiar, which feels like a strange thing to say, as if I was almost “used to” having a dead kid…However, I’ve also realized early on that it was not necessarily such a good thing, because as similar as they were, they were completely different people, and I am a different person having lost both of them than I was when I had just lost one…
I first realized that it was “okay” to “change”my grief at Giacomo’s Celebration of Life, held on February 16, 2025, 22 days after G’s epic launch. We held the celebration at the exact same place that we had Gianna’s, Elsie’s Bowling Center, in Northeast Minneapolis, and had a fairly similar setup of their favorite food, favorite activities for guest to participate in, and photo boards commemorating their lives, adorning the walls (actually using the exact same foam core boards for Giacomo’s that we had for Gianna’s, swapping out the pictures and adding a handful more boards to include the bonus years of life that he got.) It was another epic scene of incredible memories, laughter, friends, family, and joy commemorating yet another short life, lived to the brim….
But the biggest difference, the biggest change, outside the obvious shift from American Girl, dolls, and art projects to Star Wars and LEGO as the predominant themes, was ME…my actual physical position in the space, and what that ultimately meant…
It happened completely without planning, but with utter perfection…
I had perched myself in the corner, where I stood on March 24, 2023, one week after Little Miss Hummingbird flew free, for six hours straight as a receiving line of fellow, dumbfounded grievers lined up to express their condolences for the loss of my beloved Gianna, largely them attempting to comfort me in my impossible grief, which primarily morphed into me comforting THEM, as I actually had a lot more time to brace for her loss than most of our partygoers did, plus I was undoubtedly still in shock… And for Giacomo’s, I was prepared to hold post in that same spot and participate in the same level of shared, confused, and heartbreaking mourning, offering hugs that were far more a very willing expenditure of my own energy out, than it was of receiving, a demonstration of the complete irony that a “receiving line” is, in any circumstance…
Just as things were about to get underway, and I was scrambling to make last-minute preparations, I glanced up, and saw my Michael. I truly can’t remember what he said to me or if perhaps it was the wordless communication and connection that the two of us so frequently engage in these days, but either way, the next thing I knew he and I were at the bar near the entrance, at the opposite end of the ballroom where I was slated to be trapped for the next six hours. I was now poised to greet people as they came in, then encourage them to go explore the celebration of G’s life, eat some popcorn and apple pie, build a LEGO mini figure, and bowl, leaving me safely in the little bubble Michael created around us where my grief swirl around, instead of me being inadvertently held hostage, now free from the self-inflicted prison of my “spot” in the corner.
And there we stood, for hours, side by side, as mourner after mourner entered the poignant space, Michael offering me precisely what I needed—the sacred protection of my grief—completely unbeknownst to him, without any knowledge of what I’ve taken place at Gianna’s celebration years before, as we hadn’t even known each other at that time…In that moment, a simple gesture of the most profound kindness in yet another pitch-black hour for me, I was given unspoken permission to allow my grief to CHANGE… Something I now postulate was the beginning of a necessary and previously unknown, eighth stage of grief— Evolution...
This “evolution” is different than the “testing” stage of grief in which one tries to sort out life after loss with various coping mechanisms… Evolution, for me, is now allowing the grief itself to look different—even though I have grieved one way, and for a length of time, that doesn’t mean that I will always grieve that way…The recognition that my grief needs to change, so that I can continue to evolve as a human, as a that innominate, “parent with a dead kid”, since we don’t have a word for that in the English language.
This is particularly hard as I have two living children whose loss I anticipate and who I know are looking to me to see how I’m grieving their siblings, as a marker of how I might grieve them, all while trying to give them the most full lives that I fear/know will be cut short…My grief of one moment plants the seeds for the grief of the next, but I must be willing to also be unaware of and accept what blooms from those seeds, and to plant new and different ones with each passing day…
I am going to give Michael full credit for establishing the “evolution” stage of my grief, both publicly here in this forum, and then even more so in the books that are to come, as there are many other instances in just the last six months in which he has been the supportive and nurturing guide for my grief to change, in very healthy ways, with millions more to come….So stayed tuned for all that…
But for now, I’ll just share this little snippet… I had decided many months ago to stay put this year for spring break as we had so much going on, and to shift what has been a traditional trip to escape the tumultuous March Minnesota weather situation for a warmer scene, into a future 18h birthday adventure for Lukas this coming July…This was particularly of note because, of course, their spring break fell on the three-year anniversary of Gianna’s flight from the physical world to the spirit….Still wanting to find something special and Gianna-esque to do, the four of us came up with a different way as to how we would honor that day, also including Michael’s children in the festivities to toast my oldest daughter, who would be the same age as his… We made plans for a simple, yet fun, day together as the six of us… and newly evolved iteration of “family.”
But again, life had other plans and sent a reminder of how I needed to change… to EVOLVE… and instead our spring break looked quite different than any of us envisioned, as Lukas and Isadora spent the week with my parents in Hayward, chock-full of sledding, cribbage, and taking part in our family tradition of making maple syrup, while Michael and I attended to other more pressing matters out of state…Though I was grateful and honored to be able to do so, it put me in a vortex of travel hell, straight out of a prolonged episode of The Twilight Zone on March 17, a date that will perpetually live in my spirit as the greatest shift of pain to peace to pain, as I watched my beautiful daughter relinquish her body for eternal bliss, leaving my broken heart behind, now forced to attempt to pick up the shards and create some semblance of peace for the rest of us…
However, this March 17 was different…Even though I spent many points of the day all alone in unfamiliar places, with one snafu after the next being plopped right in front of me trying to prevent me from reaching my destination and, more importantly, Michael, ultimately, I made it there, along with my grief…To where I belonged…In the safety and protection of Michael’s presence and our impermeable bubble, as he is most certainly in my life to witness and encourage the changes of my grief, to hold me physically, emotionally, and spiritually as it knocks me on my ass from time to time, to celebrate in the happiness and joy that nestle up to and intertwine with the chaos and pain, and to remain by my side as the grief evolves and blooms…and CHANGES.
And for that, for HIM, and for us, the level of gratitude I have is most certainly immeasurable, BEYOND comparison and far surpasses anything I could have ever imagined.
So many people have said to me over the years that they can’t fathom going through what I do, but I was given no choice. He was. And he chose me. US. ALL of us. All of it. The grief—both mine and what will most certainly become his—And also, simultaneously, choosing the evolution and change in both of us that will inevitably follow❣️♾️❤️🩹♾️
