Grief shows its face with fierce waves of emotion that sweep us away as well as gentle memories we can linger over. In our year of lockdown and loss, I’ve experienced all the faces of grief from the benevolent to the malign, from deep gratitude to profound rage. What keeps me moving forward is “love in the trenches,” the kind that demands fortitude and commitment – not the easy breezy romantic ideal.

As the anniversary of my daughter Maya’s death approaches – 29 years since she was declared brain dead on April 6, 1992 – I’m struck by the many different guises of grief. How each one presents a new opportunity to reflect and grow as well as mourn and suffer. I’ve done my time with turbulent grief – years’ worth of it – and I’m glad to be in calmer waters.

But the incalculable losses of the pandemic have re-triggered my grief. I mourn for the more than half million families who have lost loved ones in our country, and the millions more around the world. When I think of my daughter’s sweet face, I can’t help but think of the millions who miss dear faces of their own. I’m overwhelmed and sad.

What if a leaf could whisper the slow ache

as the green drained away? Or a tree, the sudden ax?

From “Listening” by Ellen Bass (Indigo, Copper Canyon Press, 2020)

Yet I know that with loving attention, support, and time, grief will soften. It’s hard to believe that will happen in the early years after loss, but I’m living proof that it’s true. As we move along the paths mapped by our losses, we learn that grief is really love, and the deeper the love, the deeper the grief. When I let myself feel the love, I also feel the energy to move forward.

Maya would be turning 49 this year – she’d be well into midlife – and I can only speculate how she’d deal with this crisis. Her zest for life might have made the confinement of “shelter in place” challenging. But she was also smart and resilient, so I like to think she’d have found creative ways of navigating. Being totally honest, I’m thankful she didn’t have to live through the ravages of Covid-19.

One of the great privileges of motherhood is knowing someone for a lifetime. I feel so lucky to have watched Maya grow, to hear her first words, and watch her first steps. I can still see her, a dancing sprite, blond hair glistening in the sun, splashing in the Yuba River on a glorious summer afternoon. Or, her later self, brash and witty, making jokes at my expense. No one could make me laugh like Maya could – and no one did a better job of pushing my buttons. Our conflicts were fierce, emblematic battles.

Thankfully, we made peace before she left for college. Raising a high-spirited teenager bent on rebellion is not for the faint of heart. I’m so grateful she lived long enough to show herself – and me – where her talents as an actress might take her. In Swimming with Maya, I write about those final months of her life when she aced her audition at UCLA and earned a place in their theater arts program as a community college transfer student.

Maya’s accident – a fall from a horse that left her in an irreversible coma – came while she was home on spring break. She left this earth at the peak of her beauty and energy when she was only 19. Her sudden death was like a lightning strike.

By cosmic coincidence, April is also National Donate Life month, and each year as the anniversary of her death approaches, I think about the recipients of Maya’s gift. My dear friend Patti Frame received my daughter’s liver, and her life was saved after a struggle with Wilson’s disease, a life-threatening condition. Patti and I became friends after she reached out to me to say thank you two years after Maya died – we bonded in one heartfelt phone call.

Others received the gift of sight, or a new heart, or a new kidney. And many more people received bone grafts and skin tissue. They and their families celebrate the miracle of organ donation and transplantation on April 6 each year.

Grief and gratitude are not mutually exclusive. They can dance together in the same heart. As I remember Maya this April, I’ll be smiling through my tears.