I've noticed something awful in how we talk about death. Everyone performs this acceptable version of grief - sad but stable, moving forward, honoring their memory. Very neat. Very resolved by the end of the dinner party.

But I watched my father die over three years. And some days, five years later, I'm still angry at him for getting sick. Some days I resent the time I spent in hospitals instead of living my own life. Some days I feel guilty for resenting it. None of these feelings coexist nicely, and I've stopped pretending they do.

What bothers me is how we pathologize this. If you're still a mess years later, people start suggesting therapy or support groups like your grief is a problem to solve rather than just - the actual texture of losing someone. My therapist kept waiting for me to "process" and "move toward acceptance." But what if I just live here for a while? What if acceptance isn't the point?

We've made grief into a project. We talk about "honoring their legacy" like it's a to-do list - write their obituary, set up a scholarship, post an anniversary tribute. These things aren't bad, but they're ways of controlling something uncontrollable. They're ways of making death neat.

I think we need permission to be messier about this. Permission to still be weird about it. Permission to not have integrated the loss into some coherent narrative about who we've become.

Does anyone else find the grief-positive movement just as suffocating as the old stiff-upper-lip approach? Because I'm starting to think both are just different ways of not actually feeling it.