Jacob H. Rooksby: Moving forward isn’t moving on

Three years ago last month, my wife, Susan, died.

That sentence still doesn’t feel quite real. She was 40. Wise, playful, wry. She loved books and beautiful sunsets, Canada and the Royal Family. She lived with breast cancer for 10 years – more bravely and more quietly than anyone could see. She died on July 17, 2022. Our daughter was 9. The world kept turning, but mine slowed down.

In the early weeks, grief was visible. People dropped off food. Friends sent cards. Colleagues checked in. I planned a funeral. The loss was fresh and sanctioned. Everyone knew. But time has a way of folding over even the sharpest pain, and after a while the world forgets what you’re still carrying. You learn how to keep going. You start to smile again and become capable of talking about loss without crying. But you don’t stop grieving – you just stop being seen as someone who is.

And if you fall in love again – as I did – you learn something else: Not everyone will be happy for you.

Some people will question your sincerity openly. Others will keep their judgments quiet to you but share them with anyone who will listen. They’ll say you must not have loved her that much if you could remarry. That you should’ve waited longer. That you “moved on” too quickly. That you didn’t listen to their advice. That you’re a horrible person for falling for someone who had been a mutual friend.

They will not ask what it’s like to be a parent trying to rebuild a life for your child. They will not ask how hard it is to love someone new while still carrying grief for someone gone. They will not ask whether your new spouse is kind or patient or understands that love isn’t a zero-sum equation. They will assume they know or not care enough to seek to understand.

It’s a strange thing to feel joy while part of you still mourns. To love someone who’s here without letting go of someone who isn’t. To answer to others’ expectations while trying to honor your own truth.

But grief teaches strange things.

Grief teaches that moving forward isn’t moving on. It isn’t betrayal. It’s persistence. It’s love, still doing what love is supposed to do: helping us live fully and refusing to disappear.

Grief teaches that time doesn’t heal, exactly. It transforms. The sharp edges round off, the wound stops bleeding, but it never closes. Grief becomes a part of you. You learn to walk with it. You even learn to let it guide you.

Grief teaches that presence doesn’t require presence. Susan is still here in a thousand small ways: in our daughter’s expressions and traits, in the books and dreams and photos she left behind, in who I am and the choices I make daily.

Grief teaches that empathy deepens when you’ve sat with loss. You stop needing people to say the right thing. You just need them to stay, and sometimes not to say anything. To keep showing up. To remember, not fix.

And grief teaches that judgment – especially from those who’ve never faced a similar loss – reveals more about the judges than the grieving. As the poet Sarah Freligh writes, “We know nothing of loss and its sad math, how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief multiplies the one preceding it.” Those who offer simple answers to complex sorrow usually haven’t done the math.

I remarried last year. Kelly is gracious, witty, dazzling and strong in ways most people will never see. She also has endured things no one should have to endure – most of them quietly, and some of them because she loves me. She didn’t ask me to forget my prior life. She chose to love me as I am – someone who still grieves, someone who still remembers. That takes courage. That takes love. And when I see Kelly and my daughter laughing together, I feel something I never expected to feel again: happiness. Not in place of grief, but alongside it.

This year, on July 17, I posted photos online of Susan. I wrote words that attempted to do her legacy justice. Then I got on with the day. I did some of the things she loved to do – sit on the porch and reflect, have ice cream with my daughter. I did ordinary things, not because I’ve forgotten, but because I haven’t.

Because Susan is still part of this life, and so is Kelly. Because grief and joy aren’t opposites. Because love – when it’s real – doesn’t end. It simply makes space for what follows, without letting go of what came before.

And if you’re reading this while carrying your own grief, whether fresh or long ago, I hope you know this: You don’t have to explain your grief timeline – how long, how loud, how visible – to anyone. Healing is a private journey that goes at its own pace. And you don’t have to choose between the life you lost and the life you still deserve.

You can carry both.

Because there is no life “after” grief. Only with. And that’s the life I live now.

Jacob H. Rooksby is the Smithmoore P. Myers Dean of Gonzaga Law School.