There’s a certain kind of silence that doesn’t feel peaceful—it feels heavy. It settles in after the conversations have ended, when the noise quiets and the world stops asking for our attention. That’s when the memories return. Not loudly, not all at once—but in waves. Soft. Sudden. Sometimes sharp.
During the caregiving years, I often stayed busy, not only out of necessity but out of fear. Fear that if I stopped moving, I’d have to listen to what was stirring inside me. And when I did stop—when I let the silence in—it brought sadness. The sadness of losing both my mom and dad. The kind of sadness that makes you ache in places words can’t reach.
After both mom and dad passed, the thoughts would come. Did I do enough? Should I have handled things differently? Could I have eased their pain more? Would it have mattered? It’s strange how love can live alongside regret, even when you’ve given everything you could.
That’s the quiet burden so many caregivers carry: the replaying of moments, the questions with no real answers, the longing to rewrite parts of the past. We want so badly to believe we made the right choices. Perhaps we didn’t. Exhaustion, not asking further questions from doctors, being araid to ask questions of our loved ones out of fear. We all have made mistakes as caregivers, we have. And sometimes, even when we know we did it right, our hearts still whisper what if?
But over time, I’ve found a different voice in the silence. Beneath the noise of guilt and grief, there’s a softer truth: You showed up. You stayed. You did your best—because you loved them. And maybe that’s what matters most. Not perfection, not fixing everything. Just love, in its raw, messy, beautiful form. And that, is what you need to hold on to.
Now, when the silence returns, I try not to run. I let the memories come, even the hard ones. I light a candle, take a breath, and try to sit with them like old friends—complicated, but cherished. And necessary. Sitting with the good and the bad helps us to process, a necessary step in our life. Don’t keep running. Pause. Breathe. Repeat.
Because grief never fully leaves, but in quiet moments, it can soften. And in that softening, we can begin to offer ourselves the same compassion we once gave so freely to others.
Hugs,
Cyndi