it comes in waves

Disclaimer: Some of the names in this story have been changed to respect and protect the people who have so kindly decided to share their stories with us.

Mandy Linke’s parents knew they were in love within the first 10 minutes of knowing each other. Linke’s dad Randy proposed that night and the two moved in with each other the next day. The following 44 years, the couple would parent three kids and enjoy a happy marriage.

Linke laughs as she recalls the story of how her parents met. Love at first sight. She estimates that in the four and a half decades the two shared together they only spent about 30 nights apart.

The conversation shifts. Cindy, Linke's mom, passed away last April from lung cancer. Since then, her dad and the rest of her family had to figure out how to cope.

“I think I just love her so deeply that it makes me feel better that I miss her,” Linke said.

“Grief is just love with no place to go,” said author Jamie Anderson, the author of “Doctor Who.”

From a physiological perspective, this statement rings true. Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, Ph.D., explains that when we fall in love with a person, place or experience, our brains encode a bond. “Essentially, it creates a we … it creates a ‘we’ of overlapping experience,” said O’Connor. “Then, when a loved one is no longer there, we actually experience it as part of us is missing. At a very neural and coded level, our representation of the ‘we’ has a hole in it.”

For some psychologists, grief is most commonly packaged to fit into five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages were first outlined by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969 based on interviews conducted with terminally-ill patients.

However, according to the National Institutes of Health, many psychologists consider the stage model of grieving outdated due to its implications of a “standard and linear” grieving process. The reality of grieving is that not everyone goes through all of these stages, nor will they experience them in the same order and some may even repeatedly cycle back through stages over time.

Just as the process of grieving presents differently for each person, so too can the type of loss. Grief is often associated with death, especially of loved ones. However, people also grieve those who are still alive with the loss of romantic, platonic or parental relationships. Grieving can also exist following the loss of a community or when reflecting on previous versions of oneself or life before dramatic changes.

Variables like these have the power to turn a universal experience such as loss and make it a unique and often lonely experience.

“I mean, after she passed, I have felt alone because she's always my go-to. And I was always her go-to, you know,” Linke said

Cindy was diagnosed with colon cancer 15 years prior. That day she was in remission but, the cough had Linke worried.

Linke took care of her mom for almost six months until one day she kissed her mom goodbye and headed out for a dentist appointment. Her mom seemed stable. Upon returning home, she knew something was wrong right away. She urged her dad to call her siblings.

It was time.

“The first time [she had cancer], it never even phased me that she would even have a probability of dying,” she said.

After almost five and half months of fighting, Linke said goodbye to Cindy on April 28, 2023. Then, she began to grieve.

Linke has tried to adapt to a world without her mom. Her past year has been full of ups and downs.

“It comes in waves like one day you're like, fine, you can look at pictures. The next day, the breeze hits your face and you're bawling your eyes out in your car,” Linke said.

Linke has done her best to feel her emotions and take time to be sad and miss her mom. Over the year, Linke has realized that burying how she feels will make it worse.

Elaine Smith had a different experience with grief. The person she lost is still alive.

“I just knew my mom was gone and I grieved her loss for a very long time even though she was here, she was gone,” Smith said

Smith spent the first 11 years of her life traveling all over the country with her mom before they finally settled down in Eugene. Her mom was a snowboarder and freelance photographer. With no siblings and her father out of the picture, they were close.

When Smith was 20, her whole world was turned upside down. Her mom was on her way home from snowboarding and a snow load fell on the front of her car causing a major accident. The airbag saved her life, however she was left with a traumatic brain injury. The TBI had caused her mom to forget the last 20 years of her life — her daughter.

“I had to develop a sense of ‘Okay, this isn’t my mom, this is a person that I just have to delicately walk around,’” she said.

In a single moment, her mom had forgotten everything about her daughter. All their shared adventures had been wiped away. Smith was devastated. Her mom started to live a new life away from her daughter.

One of Smith's favorite things her mom did for her before the accident was write love letters to her. Sweet notes about how much she loves her daughter. She gives a sad smile as she recalls all the things she once loved about her mom, a woman who is still alive but not the same.

As Smith has continued to grieve her own mother, she became a mom herself 10 years after the accident, giving birth to a little girl. Smith recalls how lonely it was to give birth to her own daughter while her mom didn’t even know who she was.

“She hadn’t written me a love note, or any of the things that she used to do,” said Smith.

While Smith has begun to heal from her loss, she recently received a love letter from her mom for the first time in 21 years.

“A huge wound was healed, which made it possible for me to do the work that I do with others,” she said.

While this is not the first or the last loss Smith will deal with, it has changed her life and pushed her to help others who may be struggling with the same thing.

A common theme of those who have grieved is their desire to help people who are now experiencing it.

Tawnya Davis has been a therapist for over 12 years. Most of the work she does is focused on grief.

Davis’s official title is Death Doula. Instead of bringing life into the world like most doulas, she helps people leave this world.

Davis didn’t always plan on focusing on grief and loss for her career in therapy, however, as she started her work as a therapist she felt herself drawn to grief therapy.

“Because if I am going to be frank, everyone dies. Things that you love will die,” said Davis.

While Davis has seemingly surrounded herself with death and loss, she keeps the attention on those she helps.

“I do whatever a therapist does, and I compartmentalize that and I keep focusing on the person in front of me,” Davis said.

Compartmentalization is a common coping mechanism used by those who struggle with complex and multilayered grieving. Such was the case for University of Oregon senior Hannah Simmons.

In 2022, Simmons took a gap year to work seasonal jobs at a rafting company at Glacier National Park in Montana and a ski resort outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. In each of these places, Simmons built a strong support system.

After her year away, Simmons returned to Eugene, Oregon, to finish her journalism degree. This meant the inevitable loss of the communities she had built, including a seven-month long relationship.

“I did a lot of very adventurous things and I feel like I had an identity around that and then I didn't have that identity anymore,” Simmons said. “I felt very not like myself and out of touch with who I was.”

To regain her sense of self, Simmons went on a four-day hiking trip with three friends from UO. Before leaving, she made the short trip to her grandparents house next door to the home she was raised in. Her second home was surrounded by overflowing garden beds and orchards heavy with ripe fruits.

She said goodbye to her grandmother with promises of fresh-baked strawberry rhubarb pies — their favorite — when she returned. But while Simmons was 100 miles from home with limited cell service, her grandmother suffered a heart attack and passed away at the age of 81.

When Hannah returned home, she immediately felt something was wrong as she unloaded her car. Her parents were acting strangely. Her last clear memory from that afternoon was walking into the kitchen with her arms full of gear. After that everything went “fuzzy.” She can picture her dad telling her the details of the previous few days, but she could not absorb them.

“It was a very hard thing for me to grasp because I have never experienced loss in my personal life,” said Simmons. “She was a very healthy person, but she was there one second and gone the next.”

After struggling to cope with these experiences during her first fall term back in classes, Simmons attended therapy for the first time. There she realized that the source of her grief was not the one she was working through.

“I feel like I put the other issues on the forefront, like the end of my relationship. And then coming back to school and losing community. I didn't really let myself think about and process the one that, I feel like, was the heaviest for me,” said Simmons referencing the loss of her beloved grandmother.

But Simmons chooses to focus on what grief has taught her. “You never come out of grief knowing yourself less,” she said.

Over time, Simmons became more comfortable talking about her grieving experience with others. Previously, the thought of her grandmother would move her to tears. Now when people ask about the tattoo on her left arm, she smiles in gratitude.

“I got a [hummingbird] tattoo for her,” Simmons said. “She loved her hummingbirds. I feel like they're very emblematic of who she was as a person: very quick, vibrant and full of energy.”

While grief and loss are difficult to deal with, people choose different ways to honor their loved ones. Linke has lived through the emotions of losing her mom but she and her dad have found a way to honor her.

Linke's mom loved gardening and wildflowers so Linke and her dad have started making native wildflower packets to send to people.

“It opened up a lot of people to be able to talk about their grief. It's like a good icebreaker,” Linke said.

Linke not only spends time making the packets but also uses her free time to make a flower garden to honor her mom in the home the two of them spent so much time in. While Linke has missed her mom since she passed away, the flowers are one way she will continue to honor and remember the woman she loved and cherished so much.