At some point — sooner than you were ready for — you start to notice it. The people around you have resumed normal life. They talk about ordinary things. They have stopped asking how you are doing with the specific weight they used to put behind the question. They have, in some fundamental way, moved on. And you have not.
This is one of the loneliest moments in grief: the moment when you realize that the world's attention has moved elsewhere while you are still right in the middle of it.
Grief, particularly after cancer, often lasts far longer than the people around us expect it to. There is a cultural assumption — rarely examined but widely held — that grief should resolve within a few months. That by the six-month mark, you should be "getting back to normal." That a year is a reasonable timeline for the worst of it to pass.
This is not how grief works for most people, and certainly not for the loss of someone who was central to your life. The research on grief suggests that many people experience significant waves of grief for years after a loss, particularly around anniversaries, transitions, and unexpected triggers. This is normal. It is not pathology. It is the natural duration of deep love.
When you feel out of step with the world's timeline, a few things can help. First, find people who are still willing to acknowledge where you are. Friends who will still say their name. Family members who will still tell their stories. This may be only one or two people, but those people become essential.
Second, do not pretend to be further along than you are. Performing recovery for other people's comfort costs you something — a quiet suppression of truth that accumulates. You do not owe anyone a particular pace of healing.
And third, know that the discrepancy between your timeline and the world's timeline does not mean something is wrong with you. It means you loved deeply, and deep love leaves a deep mark, and that mark does not fade on a schedule that the world finds convenient.