Living with grief that's old enough to vote

THE KNICKS WERE CLAWING THEIR WAY PAST THE CELTics in Game 1 of an NBA Playoffs match so intense, my two young sons morphed into courtside commentators operating at decibel levels usually reserved for jet engines and Skittles-fueled birthday parties.

- - BY REBECCA SOFFER

We were shrieking with glee and high-fiving—me half tracking the score, half rummaging for my noise-canceling AirPods before their joy blew out my inner ear. Then, just after Jalen Brunson drove to the basket, a commercial cut in.

It was an AT&T ad portraying people suddenly inspired to dial up the ones they love from lush backyards, a boat on the Delta, and ... a tightrope bridging a deep canyon. My stomach knotted up as it correctly sensed where this was going. At the end, three little words appeared, deceptively gentle, expertly lethal in their timing: Call your mom.

I'd love to. But she won't answer. Eighteen years ago, my mom Shelby was killed in an accident on the New Jersey Turnpike.

My grief is now the age of a legal adult. It can vote. It can enlist. It may not yet be able to rent a car, but it certainly has been driving one for a while, quietly gripping the wheel during moments in which I naively thought I was steering. Like many 18-year-olds, my grief is composed and self-sufficient one moment, then reckless, loud, and needy the next. It is nuanced. It has opinions. It talks back.

I know full well that the passage of time doesn’t erase grief, but rather, stretches it. The sharp edges don’t vanish; they just space themselves out, lying in wait. That’s not a failure of healing. It’s just what love and loss look like when pulled across time.

My grief no longer flattens me on a daily basis. It’s less like a storm and more like humidity—part of the atmosphere I move through, affecting everything, even when I’m not fully aware. It’s embedded now, woven into my weltanschauung (a German word for “worldview”); how I watch basketball with my sons; how I read a line in a commercial and suddenly forget where I am. My grief is quieter, yes. But make no mistake: it’s still capable of ambush, long after society has decided that I should have “moved on.”