Black Does Crack

You know what nobody tells you about getting older? It’s that life isn’t one big transition. It’s a series of little funerals, and nobody brings food. Or a damn drink! So, we celebrate the milestones. Retirement. Empty nests. Weddings. New beginnings. Fresh starts. But nobody warns you about the weird ache that comes after the balloons deflate.

The first morning after your last child moves out, you wander into their room like you’re touring a museum exhibit called Things That Used to Be My Money. You stand there holding an abandoned phone charger, wondering how someone who couldn’t find their shoes for eighteen years suddenly knows how to negotiate a lease.

Retirement sounds glorious until Tuesday at 10:17 a.m., when you’ve reorganized the spice rack twice and realize your entire personality used to be answering emails you hated, or mentally negotiating the option between being hauled to HR or carted off to jail.

Marriage is beautiful. It’s also the moment you realize someone is now going to witness every strange little habit you’ve carefully hidden from the rest of civilization. Romance is saying, “I love you.” Marriage is yelling, “WHO USED THE KITCHEN SCISSORS TO OPEN THE AMAZON PACKAGE?”

Then there’s divorce.

Nobody gets married hoping to become an expert at splitting air fryers and mutual resentment. But here’s the thing: sometimes you don’t miss the person. You miss who you were before things got complicated. Nostalgia has terrible eyesight. She edits out the arguments and leaves in the vacations and shopping sprees.

And then there’s death.

Lord.

Grief is the one transition nobody graduates from. It sneaks up on you while you’re reaching for your mother’s recipe, hearing your father’s favorite song, or catching yourself saying something your grandmother used to say. Suddenly you’re crying in an aisle in Home Goods because they’ve restocked a piece of home decor your sister would have absolutely loved!

Nostalgia is funny like that.

It’ll have you convinced the “good old days” were perfect. Really? Were they? Because I distinctly remember us surviving with one bathroom, tangled phone cords, and relatives who, well…

The good old days also included bad knees that we ignored, toxic relationships we romanticize, jobs that stressed us out, and hairstyles and fashion sense that should qualify as evidence.

Memory is an unreliable narrator.

Still…we need nostalgia. It’s how we carry people forward. It’s why certain songs make us smile before they make us cry. It’s why recipes never taste exactly like Mom’s, even when you swear you followed every step. It’s why we tell the same stories on every occasion, adding just a little more flavor each time.

Nostalgia reminds us we lived. The trick is not moving into the past permanently. Visit. Laugh. Cry. Take a souvenir. Then come back. Because every transition, even the painful ones, is proof that life kept asking something new of you.

You became the parent who let go. The worker who finally rested. The spouse. The ex [spouse]. The widow. The widower. The whatever you’re called when you’re down a sibling. You’re the elder everyone now calls for advice, even though you’re still trying to figure out why your streaming service needs another password.

Here’s the real blessing. We don’t stop becoming (ask OUR First Lady). At every stage, we’re somebody’s nostalgia. One day your children will laugh about your sayings. Your friends will quote your jokes. Your grandkids will fight over your cast-iron skillet like it’s buried treasure. Hopefully they’ll also remember that you danced in the kitchen, loved loudly, forgave eventually, and knew that laughter belonged at every table, even the ones with an empty chair.

So go ahead. Miss what was. Just don’t forget to make today’s memories weird enough for somebody else to miss later.