There is a beautiful quote about grief:“Grief is the last act of love we can give those we love. Where there is deep grief, there was deep love.
Grief has a way of sneaking up on you when you are at your happiest.
In the spring of 2004, I began my college career. That first semester I was a ball of nerves, but I was doing well. I was finding my place. By the fall, I had made friends with two classmates who shared several of my courses. We formed our own little study group.
Over time, our group grew. Two more classmates joined us. We met at a small restaurant not far from campus to study, eat, and debate. Most of us were History majors, happily nerding out over historical facts and arguing different theories as if the fate of the world depended on it.
I was thriving academically. Math gave me trouble, but I was determined to conquer it. With the help of professors and tutors, I pushed through.
By the spring of 2006, I had completed all of my required Math and Science courses. What remained were History, Literature, and Political Science — the subjects I truly loved. I declared Literature as my minor; it felt like a natural companion to History.
On the first day of my Political Science class, eager and ready to learn, I found myself seated next to the most arrogant, know-it-all young man I had ever encountered.
He had an answer for everything.
He spoke before anyone else could finish a thought.
He challenged professors.
He challenged me.
He debated every discussion, dissected every argument, and seemed determined to prove he was the smartest person in the room. I rolled my eyes more than once.
What began as irritation slowly turned into rivalry.And rivalry, much to my surprise, turned into conversations after class… then study debates… then laughter I didn’t expect.
Somewhere between heated arguments and shared assignments, I began to see something else — someone driven, passionate, and perhaps just as afraid of failure as I had once been.
The boy I thought I couldn’t stand became someone I couldn’t imagine my college days without.
He eventually joined our study group. Around that same time, I had just purchased my first home for my little family. I was proud. Happy. Life felt like it was unfolding exactly as it should.
I planned a housewarming party and bravely invited him.
His father was one of my History professors. He later told me about their conversation.
If anything, that warning only intrigued him more.
The day of the party, he asked if he could ride with me from campus. The drive was filled with questions and small talk — the kind that slowly turns into something meaningful. I learned he had previously attended the University of Texas but had failed out. He was trying to rebuild his GPA. He had a photographic memory, so academics came easily to him — when he applied himself.
That night, surrounded by friends and family, something shifted. We played games. We laughed. We had long conversations. And then — our first kiss.
It was electric. Unexpected. Real.
We began spending nearly every moment together — in class, between classes, studying, weekends. My children adored him, and he adored them. He stepped into a father-like role with a tenderness that humbled me. He read bedtime stories, played outside, taught them to climb trees. Once, he attempted a romantic homemade lasagna and poured me a glass of wine — forgetting to mince the garlic. It was imperfect and completely beautiful.
When he held me, my head fit perfectly beneath his chin. In his arms, I felt safe in a way I never had before. It was everything I had quietly longed for — stability, warmth, certainty.
I didn’t know then how fragile certainty can be.
A few weeks later, we stayed up talking late into the night. The house was quiet. The children were asleep. The clock glowed 3:07 a.m. — one of those sacred hours when the world feels suspended between yesterday and tomorrow.
Without warning, he burst into tears.
Not quiet tears. Not subtle. The kind that come from somewhere deep — somewhere you don’t visit unless something is haunting you.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” I asked, startled by the fear in his breathing.
He lifted his bright blue eyes to mine — eyes that were usually so confident, so sure — and they looked small. Almost childlike.
“I don’t want to die,” he said.
The words hung in the air like a crack in glass.
I remember laughing softly, brushing his hair back, trying to soothe something I didn’t understand. “You’re not going to die anytime soon. You’re young. You’re healthy. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
I believed that.
With every part of me, I believed that.
But sometimes the heart knows what the mind refuses to accept.
Looking back, that moment feels different now. It feels like standing at the edge of something I couldn’t yet see — a shadow just beyond the light.
What I didn’t know then — what none of us knew — was that love can be both the safest place you’ve ever been… and the place that breaks you open the most.
The loudest voice in the room.
The sharpest mind in every debate.
The man who challenged everything.
One day, he would leave behind a silence so heavy, it would teach me what grief truly means.
And grief, I would learn, is love with nowhere to go.
The young man that challenged me.
Ebbs & Flows 