A few days ago, Kate & I were making dinner. She was prepping stuff for shrimp tacos, except for shelling the shrimp — because that was my job. We were listening to music as we almost always do while cooking.

Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” came on. That 35-year-old song recently won Song of the Year awards at the CMAs, with Tracy making history as the first Black songwriter to ever win that award. It’s also a song that I — we, as a family — associate very much with my sister Sharon. I said that Sharon would have loved that… and, boy, I sure do miss her…

And all of a sudden, I found myself crying into a half-peeled bowl of shrimp! “It’s sneaky grief,” I said to Kate, thinking (as I always do) of my friend Carole who told me about that phenomenon.

Sneaky grief can happen any time and any place — it’s found me at the grocery store! It’s been a while, actually, but it makes sense that it would creep up now. It’s been almost 13 years since Sharon died, that was an intense four months…

I don’t know why it seems a little tougher this year — maybe because it’s a “big” birthday year, another one that Sharon couldn’t celebrate with me, and another that she will never see herself.