Keep On Keeping On

Finding Peace Of Mind In Rest In Peace

Clint Collide

Jun 25, 2026

Quarter plate portrait of mother and son, mid to late 1840s : r/Daguerreotypes

Several folks have reached out over the past couple of days after noticing a shift in the tone of my daily posts.

Thank you.

I genuinely appreciate the care and concern. It means more than you’ll ever know.

The truth is, there’s been a disturbance in the Force. My Force anyway.

One of my oldest friends lost his mother on Tuesday. I learned the news yesterday.

Although she and I hadn’t been close in decades, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong before I even knew she had passed. Call it intuition. Call it coincidence. Call it whatever you’d like. All I know is that I’d been carrying around an unexplainable heaviness for the past few days.

Miss Janice was one of my last remaining mother figures.

I was sixteen when my dad died. I was forty-nine when my mom died.

Between those losses, I was blessed with a handful of adults who quietly stepped into my life when I needed them most. They weren’t trying to replace anyone. They simply showed up. With big hugs, kind words, warm meals, a listening ear, and the reassurance that I would eventually find my own way.

Miss Janice was one of those lovely people. We first met when I was seventeen.

She was warm, funny, opinionated, generous, stubborn, wonderfully complicated, and endlessly fascinating. The kind of person who leaves fingerprints on your life without ever asking for credit.

As we get older, we know we’re going to lose people. That’s simply part of the seasons of life. But knowing something is inevitable doesn’t make it any less painful when it arrives.

Each passing pulls another thread from the tapestry of our lives. Little by little, the people who knew us as children, the people who remember versions of ourselves that no longer exist, begin to disappear.

And with them go family stories, inside jokes, shared memories, old traditions, and tiny pieces of the worlds we once called home.

It’s a strange kind of grief. Not overwhelming. Not all-consuming. Just...quietly cumulative.

Over the past twenty-four hours, I’ve found myself thinking about the three little words we say so often during the grieving process that they’ve almost become automatic: Rest in peace.

I’ve heard them thousands of times. I’ve said them hundreds. We write them in sympathy cards, type them in social media comments, whisper them at funerals, and offer them as a final blessing.

They’re familiar. Comforting, even.
But this week, they’re landing differently.

Maybe rest isn’t simply the absence of life. Maybe it’s the absence of fear. The quieting of anxious thoughts. The freedom that comes from letting go of regrets, old grudges, impossible expectations, and the relentless pressure to keep proving ourselves.

Maybe peace isn’t something we only find after we’re gone. Maybe it’s something we’re meant to cultivate while we’re still here. Peace of mind. A settled heart. The ability to lay our heads on the pillow each night knowing we loved well, forgave often, laughed freely, and did the best we could with the time we were given.

Perhaps rest in peace isn’t just a farewell. Maybe it’s also an invitation.

The past year has been one of healing for me.

Rebuilding my mental and physical health has been anything but a straight line. Most mornings, I wake up, sit down at my computer, and write. Writing has become both my compass and my therapy. It reminds me where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m trying to go next.

This week reminded me that healing doesn’t make us immune to loss.

It simply gives us healthier ways to move through it.

So if these recent posts have felt a little quieter, a little more contemplative, now you know why: I’m grieving.

Not in a dramatic, life-stopping sort of way. Just in the ordinary, deeply human way we all do when someone who mattered leaves the world.

The beautiful thing is that grief and gratitude make remarkably good traveling companions.

I’m eternally grateful that I knew Miss Janice.
I’m grateful for her kindness and sage advice.
I’m grateful for the love she showed me when I needed it most.

Whether she realized it or not, Miss Janice helped shape the person I’ve become.

The best tribute I know for losses like these is to keep on keeping on. That’s what the people who loved us would want. Not for us to stop living because they’re gone, but to live a little more intentionally because they were here.