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People understand grief when someone dies.
They bring casseroles.
They send flowers.
They tell you they're sorry.
They acknowledge your pain.
But what do they do when the person you love is still alive?
Nothing.
Because they don't see it.
They see me posting memes.
They see me smiling in pictures.
They see me talking about books, advocacy, faith, and prison reform.
What they don't see is the grief.
The grief of birthdays spent apart.
The grief of holidays celebrated through letters.
The grief of hearing bad news and not being able to call your husband.
The grief of sitting in a trailer in Nevada while the man you love wakes up in a prison cell hundreds of miles away.
People think grief requires a funeral.
They're wrong.
Sometimes grief looks like waiting.
Sometimes grief looks like surviving.
Sometimes grief looks like loving someone who is still alive but completely out of reach.
And that's the kind nobody talks about.
There are no sympathy cards for prison wives.
No bereavement leave.
No support groups in church basements.
Most people don't even know what to say.
So they say nothing.
But the grief is still there.
Every missed dinner.
Every canceled visit.
Every phone call that never comes.
Every memory made separately instead of together.
And yet...
There is something grief cannot touch.
Hope.
Because unlike death, prison has a gate.
And one day that gate will open.
One day the waiting will end.
One day the prayers I've whispered into empty rooms will have a face sitting across from me.
One day this chapter will be a testimony instead of a trial.
Until then, I keep going.
Not because it's easy.
Not because it's fair.
But because love doesn't stop just because life got complicated.
And because some people are worth waiting for.
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