the version of me who showed up too late

grief isn’t always about what we lost. sometimes it’s about who we didn’t get the chance to be.

there's this version of me i think about more often than i’d like to admit.

she shows up in flashes—mostly at night, mostly when i’m quiet enough to hear her. she books the earlier flight. she insists on staying at his house. she doesn’t say “i’ll go later”—she goes. she doesn’t assume there’s more time. she understands, somehow, that when people say he’s okay for now, they sometimes mean he’s dying, and we don’t know how to say it out loud.

i wish i had been her.

when my pop got sick, no one told me how bad it really was. not outright. no one said he was dying. not in those words. i think they thought they were protecting me. or maybe they couldn’t bring themselves to admit it. i don’t blame them, not fully. i understand now that people grieve in different ways, and that sometimes silence is a form of survival.

but the silence cost something.

when we flew out to newfoundland, i spent the first week with my cousin. sleepovers, road trips, late-night pizza runs—teenage distractions. i thought i had time. i thought i’d go see him properly the next day, or the day after that. i thought next week would be when things felt real, when i’d have the energy and the words and the right things to say.

but halfway through the trip, my cousin went home, called me, and told me what the adults were whispering about. and it hit me all at once: we didn’t have much time at all.

so i spent the second week with him. every day. every moment i could. i sat with him. i helped with the small things. i watched. i listened. i tried to hold everything in my hands at once—the sound of his voice, the shape of his hands, the stillness of the house. but nothing i did felt like enough. time had already started to slip away.

five days after we got home, he died.

and i keep coming back to that first week. to the time i didn’t spend. to the version of me that didn’t show up sooner.

that’s the part no one really talks about. how grief doesn’t just attach itself to the person you lost—it clings to the version of yourself you wish had done things differently. the one who asked more questions. who didn’t shy away from the truth just because it hurt. the one who made every second count.

it’s a strange, quiet kind of mourning. one that doesn’t go away. one that loops back around when you least expect it—through a smell, a photo, a memory so sharp it cuts. and tucked beneath it is always the same whisper: i should’ve spent more time with him.

i try to have grace for my parents, too. i know they were just trying to cope. trying to protect me. trying to keep everything from falling apart. and yet, part of me resents them for not being honest sooner. for keeping me at arm’s length from what was actually happening. because while he was their father/father-in-law, he was my pop. and i didn’t just lose a grandparent. i lost him.

i think about the day we left newfoundland. it was the first time i ever saw my dad cry. really cry. and it’s something i’ll never forget. it made me realize that we were all just trying to hold grief with hands that weren’t built for it. we were all walking through the same storm, but without the language to say we were soaked.

i think about my pop a lot. not just how he died, but how he lived.

he taught me how to whistle. he would always, always dance with me. he showed me how to shell a lobster with bare hands, like an everyday task. he was the one who brought me driving for the first time—out in the truck, calm as anything, one hand steady on the wheel like nothing could ever go wrong. he made me feel safe in that way only certain people can. people who don’t just love you but like you. who believe in you before you know how to believe in yourself.

and what no one prepares you for is how guilt can live inside grief like a second skin. how you can miss someone and be mad at yourself at the same time. how you can carry love and regret in the same breath and never really untangle them.

i write about him because it’s the only way i know how to keep him close. because sometimes remembering is the only thing i have left. because grief doesn’t move in straight lines. it loops. it lingers. it teaches.

and sometimes, it speaks in whispers.
you should’ve spent more time with him.

but sometimes, if i’m really quiet, if i’m really still, i hear something else too:

he knew you loved him anyway.