On Saturday we scattered Gran’s ashes in the same place we did Dad’s. And Grandad’s.
Three times now I’ve stood in that exact spot and opened my hands to the wind.
Three times I’ve watched what was left of someone I love lift, scatter, and disappear into air that doesn’t pause to acknowledge the weight of it.
It doesn’t get easier.
The ritual is the same. The ache is the same. The silence afterwards is the same.
I thought I would cry.
I didn’t.
Instead, I was angry.
All last week I was hurt and furious in a way I couldn’t explain. Angry at the world. Angry at hypocrisy. Angry at absence. Angry that death keeps circling back to the same place in my story.
It felt bigger than Gran.
It felt older than this week.
And I can feel where I’ve been holding it.
In the pit of my stomach — a constant churn.
At the base of my skull — a tightness like tears that never fall.
In my jaw — locked.
In my hands — fists I didn’t realise I was making.
This isn’t just grief.
It’s years of bracing.
Dad died when I was 27. Since then, strength became reflex. Survival became identity. Holding it together became muscle memory.
Letting go doesn’t come naturally when you’ve trained yourself to endure.
Standing there on Saturday, though — watching three generations carried by the same wind — something in me shifted.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just a small, quiet unclenching.
On Sunday, I felt it.
The tiniest glimmer.
A spark under the ash.
Joel said I had my shine back.
I don’t know if it’s fully back.
But I felt it flicker.
And that feels dangerous in the best way.
It still hurts.
There is still an ache I can’t quite name. A low hum of something unfinished. Buried emotion moving under the surface like something waking up.
But I don’t want to live clenched anymore.
I don’t want to keep carrying rage as proof of love.
I don’t want to stay in survival because it feels safer than hope.
I have stood in that spot three times.
I do not intend to live there.
I want our fresh start.
Our summer house.
Our forever.
I have waited long enough to live.
Ashes behind me.
Fire ahead.
Grief shaped me.
It doesn’t get to keep me.