Moments of grief come in all sizes and can strike when you least expect it. I call this the grief sneak attack–when grief ambushes you suddenly during an otherwise happy or normal moment.

It is winter in the Pacific Northwest. Early this morning, the gray sky slowly dropped plump rain drops that burst when they hit the already saturated ground. Fog sat low over the trees in the distance. But it was warm and bright inside my kitchen, which I long ago painted a soft and velvety cantaloupe color specifically to warm up our insides against the long months of bleak, gray dampness. As I was making school lunches for the kids, my youngest sat at the table nearby munching pumpkin bread, when I commented to him that his beautiful blue eyes brightened my morning.

“Actually,” he said, “they’re not so blue anymore. More greenish bluish gray. Do people even have gray eyes?”

I was cutting my daughter’s sandwich into four squares. I stopped, and it hit me. The grief sneak attack.

“Actually, your Grammy’s eyes were gray. Greenish bluish gray. Mostly gray.” I said.

Would my son have my mother’s eyes? Will his pale ocean blue change and become like hers, the verdigris silver of calm, cool water blended with the dense grayish blue of a storming sky? I wasn’t sure if this change would be a beautiful reminder of her or a daily source of aching pain. My eyes are light brown, like golden caramel and whiskey swirled together, so I don’t have this piece of her.

The grief hit me hard in the gut, I tried to breathe in, and it felt like knives slicing me inside. The oxygen just wouldn’t come. My eyes stung with tears, and I stood at the cutting board beginning to cry.

In a matter of seconds I thought through all the things that my mother was missing. She died just over three years ago. She’s missed a total of seven grandchildren for more than three years. They’ve had so many firsts and accomplishments–goals scored, games both hard won and lost, hundreds of silly moments, inches grown, a wealth of knowledge newly learned, and so many birthday wishes. I’ve missed three years of hearing her voice and sharing my ideas and stories with her. All of this sweeps through me before I make the final cut on the sandwich.

I can’t explain how much it hurts to realize that the thing that you want most in the world is never coming back, no matter how much you pray or how much you want it, if you haven’t experienced this level of loss. You only truly understand when it happens to you. Has grief ever snuck up on you, when you’re past the immediate phase of raw grief, when you’re moving through the world, thinking everything is decently okay for the minute?

Grief can certainly be long, drawn out, and achingly painful over time. Or like on this rainy Thursday it can pop up on you so suddenly, ambushing you, stabbing you in the heart, and running away. It leaps out of the shadows where it was hiding, from where it has been watching you all along. Grief comes on quickly and packs a punch.

This small and unexpected hit can hurt just as much as it did right after your mom or dad died. It hurts just as much as a prolonged period of grieving. The swiftness and randomness with which this grief can resurface simply adds to the pain and cruelty it inflicts on your already broken heart, which has been trying to patch itself back together since your person passed away.

I’m sorry to say, grieving friend, that this is probably going to happen to you at some point. It seems so unfair that after we feel like we just might have survived the roughest and most debilitating phase of grief in the early days, that grief can come back so unexpectedly and hurt just as much as it did in the beginning.

Just so you’re prepared, if your loss is recent, let’s sit with that for a brief moment. It can hurt, three years or more after the death, just as much as it did in the beginning. Out of nowhere. You’re not weird. There is nothing wrong with you. You don’t need to be farther along in someone’s idea of a grief process, over it by now, or whatever else friends or family might say to you.

You can take any amount of time you need to recover from the sneak attack. Five minutes. An hour. You can wait until tomorrow. However long you need to feel it is okay. Let the grief in. Singer-songwriter Gord Downie wrote “either it’ll move me // or it’ll move right through me // fully, completely” Let your grief have it both ways. Fully and completely. Let it move you and then move right through you. Sometimes it’s the only way forward.

Also, it’s okay not to stay in this grief. It’s okay to feel it briefly, let the tears come if they do, and move on quickly. Pack up the sandwich, take a deep breath, and begin your day. I may not have my mom’s beautiful eyes, but I definitely, and perhaps unfortunately, have her strong Polish jaw and her stubbornness. Simply acknowledging that the grief ambush happened, recognizing it, and naming it, then moving on, is enough, and it doesn’t mean that you love your lost person any less now that some time has gone by. It simply means that today you are handling it this way.

We talked a bit before about what to do when grief pops up in unexpected places. Your grief will be there when you need it again, or when it needs you. It just happens, this grief sneak attack. The ambush.

I’m not sure if it still happens ten, twenty or more years after the death of a parent. If this is you, and you’re further along on the journey of living with grief, please comment below and let me know. Your story will likely help others, too. It helps so much not to be alone. I am just one person, friend, but you’re welcome to join me. I’m here for you. Welcome to the tribe.