Ron Simmons — Healthy-ish
What grief taught me about letting go, and what it means to truly honor the people we lose.
One year ago today, we lost someone who shaped a big part of who I am. He was a father, a grandfather, a husband, a truck driver, a handyman who could fix just about anything with whatever happened to be nearby. He was my sister’s ex-husband, the father of my nieces and nephew, and someone who had a real influence on me growing up. Life took us in different directions a long time ago, but the years between us never changed what he meant to me. Cancer took him too soon. And I hate that.
I want to be clear about that. I’m not going to dress it up or wrap it in a pretty bow. It wasn’t fair. It isn’t fair. A man with that much life, that much heart, that much left to give, gone too soon. And for a while, I sat in that anger. I think most of us do when we lose someone we genuinely loved.
“Grief that isn’t dealt with doesn’t disappear. It just changes shape. It becomes resentment, avoidance, or a version of someone frozen in pain.”
But here’s what I’ve come to understand over this past year: holding onto the injustice of his death was slowly stealing the gift of his life. Every moment I spent being angry that he was gone was a moment I wasn’t spending remembering who he actually was and who he helped me become.
There’s a misconception about grief that I think trips a lot of people up. Accepting a loss doesn’t mean you’re okay with it. It doesn’t mean you think it’s right, or fair, or that the universe made some wise call. Acceptance simply means acknowledging what is, so you can stop fighting a war you already lost.
Acceptance Isn’t Agreement
He’s gone. That’s the reality. And no amount of anger, bargaining, or replaying moments in my head is going to change that. What I can control is what I carry forward. What I choose to do with who I am because of him.
When I made that shift, not overnight and not easily, something opened up. I stopped thinking of him as someone who was taken from us and started thinking of him as someone I was lucky enough to have in my life. That changed everything.
The People Who Shape Us Don’t Disappear
Here’s what no one tells you about losing someone who influenced you: they don’t actually disappear. Their voice shows up when you’re faced with a hard decision. Their example surfaces when you’re tempted to take a shortcut. The way they lived, the standards they held, the way they treated people, the work ethic they had, that stuff doesn’t die with them. It lives in you.
I carry him with me when I show up for my family. When I fix something with my hands instead of calling someone else to do it. When I stay humble and keep my word. He helped shape those things in me during my childhood, and even after we went our separate ways, that never left.
“A person’s legacy isn’t the obituary. It’s the quiet, everyday way they live on inside the people they loved.”
That’s a legacy. And it’s one I’m committed to honoring, not by grieving him endlessly, but by becoming someone he’d be proud of.
Moving Forward, Not Moving On
There’s a phrase people say after a loss that I’ve always found a little off: “moving on.” Like grief is a season you pass through and eventually leave behind, shutting the door on the person as you go. I don’t believe that’s how it works, or how it should.
What I’ve found is that acceptance allows you to move forward while keeping that person with you. You’re not replacing them. You’re not forgetting them. You’re carrying them with you into who you’re becoming.
One year later, I don’t remember him with the weight of loss the way I did in those first months. I remember him with warmth. I remember the jokes. The way he’d show up, no questions asked, when you needed him. The big laugh. The real talk. I remember the brother I knew and I’m grateful for every moment of it.
If you’re sitting in grief right now, for anyone, I’m not here to tell you to rush through it. Feel what you feel. All of it. But when you’re ready, consider this: acceptance might be the most loving thing you can offer the person you’ve lost. It means their life mattered more to you than their death. It means you choose to let them live on in who you are, rather than staying stuck in the anger of losing them.
That, to me, is what it means to truly honor someone.
Rest easy Jim. You are missed every single day.
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