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<span class="wikivoice-config" data-narrator="Jimmy Hawkins"></span> | |||
There's a before and after. Before, I carried everything. Not just the bills, the school runs, the late nights fixing a flickering light in the boys' room. I carried *her* too. Like that old wrench she used to hand me when I'd get stuck on a job. I kept it in my tool belt, rusted and useless, just because it was hers. Every time I pulled it out to tighten a socket, I felt the weight of her not being there to say "Good job, Jimmy." I thought that was how you grieved—holding on tight to the things that hurt the most. | There's a before and after. Before, I carried everything. Not just the bills, the school runs, the late nights fixing a flickering light in the boys' room. I carried *her* too. Like that old wrench she used to hand me when I'd get stuck on a job. I kept it in my tool belt, rusted and useless, just because it was hers. Every time I pulled it out to tighten a socket, I felt the weight of her not being there to say "Good job, Jimmy." I thought that was how you grieved—holding on tight to the things that hurt the most. | ||
Revision as of 01:03, 2 January 2026
There's a before and after. Before, I carried everything. Not just the bills, the school runs, the late nights fixing a flickering light in the boys' room. I carried her too. Like that old wrench she used to hand me when I'd get stuck on a job. I kept it in my tool belt, rusted and useless, just because it was hers. Every time I pulled it out to tighten a socket, I felt the weight of her not being there to say "Good job, Jimmy." I thought that was how you grieved—holding on tight to the things that hurt the most.
Look, I'm no expert on grief. I just knew I was drowning in it, and the wrench was the anchor dragging me under. Then last Tuesday, my youngest, Chloe, 10 now, asked me why I still had it. "It's just a tool, Dad," she said, not unkindly, just curious. "Why do you keep it?" I looked down at the cold metal in my hand, the one I’d carried for eight years. And I realized: I wasn’t honoring her. I was just using it to prove I was still broken. I wasn’t living with her memory—I was living in it.
Here’s what I figured out: You don’t carry grief like a backpack. You don’t wear it like a badge. You carry it like a weight you have to move, not a thing you cling to. So I took that wrench out of my belt. I put it in a drawer with her old earrings and a coffee mug she loved. I didn’t throw it away. I just… let it sit. Let it be just a thing, not a burden.
The shift wasn’t dramatic. No fireworks. But the next morning, I woke up without that tightness in my chest. I made pancakes for the kids—real ones, not just toast—and I actually saw them. Saw Chloe’s freckles, heard the boys arguing over cartoons without wanting to scream. I realized I’d been so busy carrying the past, I’d forgotten how to be present for the present. For the messy, loud, alive now.
You just do the next thing. Not the big, heroic thing. Just the next thing. Like putting a wrench in a drawer. Or making pancakes. Or looking your kid in the eye and saying, "I’m here." That’s how you stop carrying the weight. You just put it down. One small, ordinary moment at a time.
— Jimmy Hawkins, just a dad figuring it out