The fork slipped against the plate with a sharp, clean sound. Mara paused, then forced her hand to steady. No one looked up. Conversations kept going about weekend plans, different professors, etc. It always felt so loud in the dining hall.
“You okay?” someone asked across from her.
She nodded before she could think about it. “Yeah.”
She took another bite, chewing carefully, like there was a right way to do that. Around her, people laughed at something she hadn’t heard. Looking down, Mara saw her phone light up, and for a split second she imagined it was him. Her chest tightened before she could realize what happened and quickly put her phone down. His name hadn’t been there in months, why would it be there now?
“You’ve been really strong,” the girl next to her said, softer now, like they were stepping into something serious without fully committing. “I don’t know if I could handle something like that as well as you are.”
Mara swallowed. The food sat heavy, unmoving. It felt like a pill lodged in her throat.
“Thanks,” she said.
Strong meant not bringing him up, not ruining dinner. No matter how much she wants to just talk all about him, she knew she couldn’t sit in the uncomfortable silence that follows his name everywhere. She took a long sip of water to regulate her rising anxieties.
Across the table someone started animatedly talking about a concert they went to the night before, but Mara could only focus on the water dripping down the side of her glass and onto the table, forming a small ring of water around the base.
If it were last year, she probably would have been in her dorm and on the phone with her grandpa. He would have been able to calm her down about upcoming finals, he would have told her about Iowa Women’s Basketball winning over the weekend, he would have told her how much he missed her and how excited he was for her to come home. Her grandparents had adopted her 13 years ago, and ever since she had especially gotten close with her grandpa. He would take her on hours-long car rides when she was upset, he woke her up every morning for school, he picked her up from school, they called every week multiple times a week. Losing him felt like losing an integral piece of herself.
She let thoughts like these flow without trying to stop them. She thought about it every single day, and it never seemed to get any easier. It has been over 4 months since she received that phone call: December 20th, 2025 at 01:21pm. Everyone has been moving on, but it feels like she can’t. It’s been 132 days of crying, some days worse than others.
Sometimes she will cry in her dorm for over 5 hours, other days she will cry for only 1 hour, and sometimes all she can muster up is staring angerly at a photo of them together. It’s selfish of her to wish he stayed, to be upset that he passed on without walking her down her wedding aisle, without meeting his great-grandkids, without seeing her or her brother graduate. She can’t help these feelings, even if they make her feel guilty.
Somedays, though, aren’t as bad as others. Even if she still cries, there are moments of busy where she doesn’t think of it. When she comes to this realization, guilt settles in again. Does she deserve to feel better after losing someone so close? After his death, she started to get anxiety about her grandma. She worried that when she arrived back to Iowa, her grandma would be sent to the hospital and not leave just like grandpa was sent to the hospital on May 12th, 2025. Her brother shared similar concerns, which made her feel less alone. He was also home with grandma, still being a sophomore in high school, so Mara knew that grandma was taken care of at least.
Mara waited until the table started to break apart before she stood. Chairs scraped, people checked their phones, the conversation thinning into smaller pieces.
“Hey,” someone said behind her. “You heading out?”
“Yeah. Early morning tomorrow.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, she did have an early morning tomorrow.
Outside, the air felt sharper than it had any right to be. She stood there for a second longer than necessary, like she was waiting for something to catch up to her. It didn’t. Her phone was already in her hand before she realized it. The screen lit up. Her thumb hovered, then moved without much thought. Her grandfather’s text thread was in her recents, and clicking it lead to a wall of green text.
Grandpa ❤
You: Miss you so much grandpa
April 20th.
Mara scrolls up, looking for the last message he sent.
Grandpa <3: Me too sweet heart
That was November 8th, 2024, in response to her saying “Can’t wait to see you.”. Way before his death, but they communicated with calling anyway. It still made her sad. She stared at it, the words still sitting there like they hadn’t expired. Like they were still waiting for her to do something about them. Mara typed.
You: I wish we could get dinner at our favorite Chinese Buffet
Sent. The message slid into the thread, neat and contained. No error. No bounce-back. Just… there. Her chest loosened, just slightly.
“Still texting him?”
The voice came from her left. Mara flinched, locking her phone out of instinct. Her roommate, Jess, stood a few steps away, keys in hand. She looked slightly sad.
Mara shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
Jess hesitated, shifting her weight. “I get it, but don’t you think he would want you to move on? Don’t you think it might be better to, I don’t know, start letting some of that go?”
There it was. She had heard this before from her grandma, dad, and boyfriend. Mara looked down at her phone again, at the blank screen now.
“Let what go?”
“You know,” Jess said, softer now. “All of it. Holding on like this.”
Holding on. Like it was something physical she could just set down and walk away from.
“It’s not like I think he’s going to answer,” Mara said. The words came out flatter than she meant them to.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you mean.”
Jess sighed. “I just don’t want you to get stuck.”
Mara let out a short breath, almost a laugh. “Stuck where?”
Jess didn’t answer right away. She didn’t have to. It didn’t feel like being stuck. It felt like balance. Like something steady she could reach for when everything else tilted.
“It’s fine,” Mara said.
Jess nodded, but it wasn’t agreement. “Okay.”
They stood there for a second, the space between them filled with everything neither of them pushed further.
“Just think about it?” Jess added finally. Mara slipped her phone into her pocket. “Yeah,” she said.
Jess didn’t bring it up again. Not directly. But the suggestion lingered, settling into the small spaces of Mara’s day. In the pause before she opened her messages, before she spoke to him about her day aloud, or called his cell to just feel normal again. She was never taught how to deal with grief, and everyone seems to tell her the same things.
Just think about it.
So she did.
Before she knew it, Mara was on a flight back home after finishing her semester. A week later, Mara sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, a cardboard box pulled from the back of her closet. The tape peeled back with a dry, tearing sound that seemed louder than it should’ve been. She had things from her grandfather on the floor next to her. A sweatshirt she’d never returned. A half-finished book with his receipt still marking the page. A charger that didn’t fit anything she owned.
Mara picked up the sweatshirt first. Gray, worn thin at the sleeves. She pressed it between her hands, then folded it once. Twice. Set it carefully in the box. This is good, she told herself. This is what moving forward looks like. She reached for her phone before she could stop herself. The thread was still there.
I wish we could get dinner at our favorite Chinese Buffet.
No reply, obviously. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. Then, slowly, she backed out. Locked the screen. Placed the phone face down on the floor, just out of reach.
“That’s enough,” she said, under her breath. It sounded rehearsed. Like a line she’d heard somewhere else.
One by one, she added things to the box. The book. The charger. A crumpled note she didn’t read. Each movement deliberate. Controlled. When the box was full, she pushed it away from her, toward the closet. It wasn’t fully inside, just far enough so she didn’t have to look at it. Mara sat there for a moment, hands resting in her lap. Waiting. For something to shift. For the tightness to ease. For the quiet to feel lighter instead of heavier.
This was supposed to help. That’s what everyone said, in different ways. That you had to create space. That holding on kept you stuck. Mara exhaled slowly, like she was trying to breathe into a new shape. Nothing. The room felt off. Not empty, something worse than that. It felt misaligned, like something had been removed that everything else had been balancing around.
Her eyes drifted, without thinking, to the corner where the box sat. It was closed now. Contained. She stood too quickly, the motion sharp enough to make her dizzy.
Crossed the room in three steps, then stopped. Don’t, she told herself. This is the point. This is where you don’t go back. Mara pressed her hand flat against the closet door instead, like she could hold it shut from the outside. It didn’t feel like relief. It felt like holding her breath. She stayed like that for a few seconds, maybe longer. Then she let out a short, uneven laugh.
“Okay,” she said, to no one. “Okay.”
Her hand dropped. The closet door opened too easily. The box was right there. Mara knelt, pulling it back toward her, faster now, the careful movements gone. The flaps bent as she pushed them open again. The sweatshirt was on top. She grabbed it, pressing it against her face without thinking, breathing in air that didn’t hold anything anymore, yet still something in her chest steadied. Aligned again. Mara sat back on her heels, the fabric clutched in her hands.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
The box stayed open for a while after that. Not completely open, just enough that Mara didn’t feel the need to pretend it wasn’t there anymore. Eventually she stopped sitting on the floor. Her legs went numb, her hands sore from holding onto fabric that didn’t change anything and still changed everything. She got up. The sweatshirt stayed on her desk chair, she didn’t put it away.
Later that evening, she made tea she didn’t really want. She carried it to the chair grandpa sat in everyday, where he would wave at her through the window anytime she was coming home, and watched the cars drive past. She took out her phone and opened their text thread. No new messages. No change. Just the same quiet persistence of something that didn’t ask to be resolved. Mara didn’t type, she just looked at it.
For a long time, she used to think there were only two options: keep holding on and stay stuck, or let go and move forward. But that wasn’t what it felt like anymore. It felt like neither of those things had ever been quite right. She set the phone on the windowsill.
“Today was weird,” she said out loud.
No response came, of course. Still, she nodded slightly, like that was enough. Outside, a car slowed at the corner. Someone called someone else’s name. Life continued in its ordinary, unremarkable way. Mara stayed by the window, sitting in his chair. Not trying to leave anything behind. Not trying to fix anything either. Just including him in the quiet of it. Not as a weight she had to drop. Not as something she was supposed to outgrow. But as something that had changed form and stayed. Her grief didn’t end. It stopped asking to be solved. And for the first time, that didn’t feel like a problem.
Cassandra Fullenkamp is a third year Biochemist at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. For her Anthropology final she had to write something on a cultural category of her choice, so she chose grief. This is a short story about challenging the “hidden normal” that grief should diminish over time.
