The Terrible Maths of Grief

There are many things’ people don’t tell you about grief, but one of the hardest truths is this:

after someone you love dies, your life becomes threaded with The Terrible Maths.

You count everything.  Not out of choice, not out of ritual - but because time suddenly becomes the only thing tying you to them, and yet it also becomes the thing taking you further away.

Time seems to change

You mark the minutes, because in the beginning that’s all you can do. Minutes since you last held them. Minutes since the world made sense. Minutes since you felt like a whole person.

Then the minutes turn into hours, hours

into days, and somehow those days gather themselves into months and years…even though for you time hasn't been moving quite the same as it has for everyone else.

People around you see anniversaries; you see a timeline dragged across your heart.

Every year is another notch further from the last moment they were alive in your arms, in your sight, in your world.

And yet - this maths isn’t only about dates.  It’s about milestones, too. 

The kind that arrive whether your heart is ready or not.

A first day of kindy.

A graduation.

A sixteenth birthday.

A driving lesson.

A school ball.

A future that should have unfolded with them in it.

Memorising the milestones

Each milestone becomes a strange collision of pride, grief, longing, and disbelief.

You look at the cohort of children moving through the world - children your child should have been walking alongside - and you feel the ache of what’s missing.

It’s remarkable, isn’t it?  A whole group of young people, bright and buzzing with possibility, completely unaware that their circle has always been missing someone.

They don’t know there should have been another friend among them.

Someone who should have been lining up beside them in class photos, sharing inside jokes, racing across playgrounds, rolling their eyes in assemblies, and dreaming teenage dreams.

And you’re there on the sidelines thinking,

My child should be in that photo.

My child should be grabbing their school bag, signing their name, stepping into the world with you.

You don’t even know you’re missing someone…but I do.

It’s such a profound, quiet truth of grief:

the world moves forward unaware, while you carry the knowledge of an empty space only you can feel.

This is the terrible maths. The counting. The measuring. The constant recalculating of a life that now has two timelines - one for you, and one that ended too soon for them.

Time for love

But here’s the gentler part: this maths is also a testament to love.You count because they mattered.  You measure because they are woven into your every season.  You mark time because your heart still insists:

They should be here. They are worth remembering. They are still mine.

Maybe the numbers never soften, but over time, they can become less of a burden and more of a thread that stitches them into your story in a way that never fades.

Love doesn’t disappear. It evolves.  It reshapes itself. And even the terrible maths becomes part of how we honour the ones we miss the most.

If you’re sitting inside your own terrible maths right now, you don’t have to navigate it alone.  When you’re ready, I’m here - gentle, steady, and alongside you - or as long as you need.

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