Why does grief feel different ten years after someone dies?

Mirabai knew something about time and loss. She wrote about Krishna for decades, and her longing never disappeared — but it transformed. The sharp, all-consuming ache of early grief doesn't stay that way. What happens instead is subtler and, strangely, harder to name. Ten years out, you're not grieving the same person anymore. You're grieving who they were to you *then*, mixed with who you've become since. The immediacy fades. You stop reaching for your phone to tell them something. But then a song, a place, a stranger's laugh—and suddenly you're not the person you've been for the last decade. You're the person from before. This isn't healing in a straight line. It's more like how a river changes. The water's always moving, but the river itself stays. Some days grief is background—you notice it like weather. Other days it surfaces with full force, and you realize you're not "over it" and never will be. That's not a failure. That's how love works across time. The useful part: stop expecting grief to follow a schedule. Let it be seasonal, triggered, unexpected. That's not regression. That's fidelity to someone who mattered.