A friend once told me about the morning she finally learned to grieve. I never really imagined what she meant because I did see her cry during her mother's funeral, I saw her whole life upended and I watched her entire life become a shadow of what it once was.
It wasn't during the funeral, she had said. Neither was it when they read the will or even when they cleared out her mother's closet, each dress still holding the ghost of her perfume. All this while her new reality had yet to sink in. even though she was bawling and the condolences were constantly pouring in. It happened six months later, on an ordinary Tuesday morning, when she dropped her mother's favorite coffee cup.
She'd described it to me over lunch that day, her eyes distant with memory. The cup wasn't anything special to look at – just old ceramic with a stubborn coffee stain at the bottom and a chip on the rim that her mother had refused to throw away. "It adds character, honey," she'd always say, running her finger along the imperfect edge.
"I'd been using it every morning since she passed," my friend told me, pushing her food around her plate. "It was my way of keeping her close, I suppose… Wake up, Pour coffee, Answer emails, Exist, and Repeat. I was going through all the motions, doing everything right, being so careful not to fall apart." She'd started working remotely full-time because she didn't want to deal with people.
At this point in the story, lunch tasted like paper in my mouth, and I never thought I'd be writing this into a story someday.
"But that morning," she continued… "My hands had trembled just slightly, and the cup slipped." The sound of it shattering against the kitchen tile was almost musical. The coffee spread across the floor like a dark galaxy, and she just stood there, staring, until something inside her cracked too.
"The funny thing was, I started laughing," she said. "Standing there in my coffee-soaked pajamas, I remembered how Mom used to wrap both hands around that cup every morning, breathing in the steam like it was oxygen. How she'd close her eyes with that first sip, shoulders relaxing like she was settling into a warm bath. All these little rituals I'd watched a thousand times without really seeing."
The laughter turned to tears somewhere between picking up the pieces and grabbing paper towels. Not the quiet, dignified tears she'd shed at the funeral, but raw, uncontrolled sobs that echoed off the kitchen walls. For the first time since her mother had gone, she felt something break loose inside her chest. She wailed like the baby she was, Her mother's baby.
"Sometimes," she told me, wiping a stray tear with her napkin, "it takes breaking something precious to realize it's okay to be broken too. That morning, surrounded by ceramic shards and cooling coffee, I finally understood what Mom meant about things with character." She smiled then, a wobbly but real smile with black tear streaks on her cheek. "They tell better stories."
After lunch, I went my way, but her story never left me and got me thinking about how 'It's okay to feel broken too, It's okay to not be okay and it doesn't make you any less special'
Have you even had any experience that resonates with this statement? Let me know in the comment session. Perhaps your story may inspire someone to be okay…