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Surprises in grief

Lynne Baab • Wednesday August 19 2026

Surprises in grief

I thank God for the grief counselors at hospice. They affirmed that everyone’s grief journey is unique. No pressure to conform to any expectation of stages or emotions or thoughts. This week, I’ve been thinking about all the unexpected things that I’ve thought and felt since Dave’s passing to a new life on April 9.

You might not be able to guess what I was doing when these thoughts first came to mind. I was washing dishes! When Dave and I met, we began the practice of doing the dishes when the other one cooked. Dave cooked three times when we were dating. No comment on those meals! I’ll just say that when we got married, I did almost all of the cooking, so he did almost all of the dishes. For about a year, when our boys were young teenagers, Dave cooked one meal a week. This pattern ended when the boys asked me to ask Dave to stop cooking “souper chicken,” his go-to combination of rice, chicken, and canned soup.

That means that for 50 years, I hardly ever did any dishes. Dave kept doing kitchen clean up until only a couple of weeks before he passed. Now that I’m solely in charge of dishes, I can’t get over how many there are. It seems like every time I walk into the kitchen, I see mounds of dishes. I get them done, and the pile reappears right away. What? Why? I never knew how often Dave cleaned the kitchen.

Probably my biggest surprise after Dave’s passing was that I didn’t feel sad for the first six weeks, only thankfulness and relief. But the second biggest surprise is how relentless the kitchen mess is. No grief guidebook I’ve ever seen talks about kitchen clean-up as a significant aspect of grief.

Another surprise is what I’ve been learning from the constant encouragement from grief counselors to let my own grief journey be whatever it is. To feel my feelings. To accept that my path won’t be like anyone else’s. A friend who read my blog post about that said to me the other day, “I’ve never known anyone who is as critical of their feelings as you are.” Really? I obviously have so much praying and pondering to do about this. I suspect it relates to an inability to forgive myself, which makes me wonder if I forgive others very well. I’m sure in the future in this space, you’ll be reading more about forgiveness.

Another surprise relates to anticipatory grief, that grief that we feel before things happen. Until recently, I wasn’t aware of how much I grieved during the decade when Dave lived with a chronic lung disease. I shoved those feelings of sadness and frustration down deep inside. I was most conscious of feeling fatigue in that decade, which can be a symptom of grief.   

Lastly, I’ve also been surprised at the remarkable amount of feedback I’ve been getting on this series of posts about grief. Readers have been expressing a deep need for validation of the grief we feel about so many aspects of life, including losses related to health, employment, and relationships, as well as deaths.

Holy Spirit, comforter, thank you for your presence with us when we grieve, whatever we are grieving and whatever form that grief takes in us. Help us pay attention to our thoughts and feelings, bringing them into your presence in prayer. Enable us to feel Jesus walking with us.

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Next week: More about my grief journey.  Illustration by Dave Baab.

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The new book of Dave’s watercolors is here. You can buy cards, T-shirts, bags and other items with Dave’s watercolors on them here.

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