Grief is a country that has no definite borderlines and that recognizes no single trajectory. It is a space that did not exist before your loss, and that will never disappear from your map, no matter how hard you rub at the charcoal lines. Kerri ní Dochartaigh

I know the way to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. To Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. I know the back routes and shortcuts. The quickest way to get there and the road tricks that work during rush hour. Which turns to make and ramps to take and where to exit. No map or Google directions required.

There are no quick trips to the oncology department, even when the news is good and treatment is minimal. It’s a form of relentless travel that wears you down between the time in transit and the waiting. So … much … waiting. Waiting to see the doctor or nurse practitioner. Waiting for the blood or platelets to be typed and prepped and sent up for transfusion. Waiting for the chemo to drip in and the clearance to go home.

Despite how close we were to Jimmy’s care teams and as much as I enjoyed spending time with his nurses and nurse practitioner, I was always grateful for the long breaks between appointments and scans whenever Jimmy was doing well. I didn’t miss the long drives to San Francisco or all the sitting around. The team was there if we needed them, and we were part of the family, regardless of the distance. Known, embraced, protected, loved.

In the early years of Jimmy’s brain cancer diagnosis, I wanted so badly to be done with the hospital. To see it as a place that was no longer a part of our lives. Just a cruel detour or harrowing way station on the path to Jimmy’s long, healthy life. A place we used to go then outgrew, somewhere he was too healthy to visit any more.

But when the cancer recurred, the oncology clinic and in-patient rooms became my safe space. It was where we went for ideas on how to cure Jimmy or keep him alive. To learn what to do when the symptoms got hard and scary. To spend time with the doctors and nurses meant Jimmy was still alive.

We all have maps of places we no longer go, locations that no longer serve or belong to us. The schools our kids moved on from. The jobs we left. The apartments we outgrew. Childhood homes that have been sold or torn down. Forests and fields that were leveled then cemented over. Although I miss many of those places, I mostly get nostalgic if I happen to drive by one of them. They hold happy memories, and even the ones that don’t taught me something important about the world or myself.

I wasn’t prepared for the way the two hospitals and everyone we knew there disappeared as destinations after Jimmy died. I was still welcome in the building, encouraged to visit in fact. But there was no longer a reason to go.

I wouldn’t want to erase those places from the map of my life, even if I could. It wouldn’t ease the pain of Jimmy’s absence, and there’s too many memories of late-night talks, belly laughs and small kindnesses that would be lost. The buildings still house people I care deeply about who gave everything they had to save my son’s life. Relationships that endure, just not inside those four walls.

It took time after Jimmy died to figure out the places that were no longer in the safe part of time. The dead ends and access points that were now closed forever. Even now, ten years out, I am still learning how to navigate this grief-filled afterlife. Wandering aimlessly at times, bumping into barriers, barely avoid the cracks and smoking craters of what was left behind.

Life-altering losses are coordinates in time, forever burned into the maps of our lives. Painful reminders that we can only maneuver our way through what is here. That no matter how bright the longing burns, all we can do is find ways to be grateful for the locations that are left.