#8 Summer of Grief — The Grieving Train

The title is dramatic, I know. But I was on a train, and I did board the wrong one. I was standing on the platform, a little too tired to think properly. I didn’t check the screen. I just stepped inside, like I had done so many times before. It felt automatic, almost comforting; the rhythm of travel, of returning home. I assumed, without thinking, that this train would take me to Amsterdam. That it would carry me back to something familiar.

But about thirty minutes in, something felt off. The digital display didn’t say “Amsterdam.” I opened Google Maps, and of course, I was heading in the opposite direction. Something, apparently, wasn’t quite ready to take me home. Not just yet.

Earlier today, I had my final writing class in Rotterdam. Maybe that’s why this train feels like the grieving kind — not because I’m terribly sad, but because I’m not ready to let go of a space where I felt held. It was the kind of room where you could speak in half-finished thoughts and still be understood. We talked about characters and perspective and whether a story needs a beginning or an end — and how sometimes, it doesn’t. How freeing it is to choose your own words, your own rhythm, your own voice, without trying to make it fit into anything.

I think that’s why I took the wrong train. I was daydreaming — about the class, the conversations, what comes next. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe I just needed a pause.

Now, I’m sitting here with a handful of strangers. No one looks particularly joyful, but no one seems entirely broken either. Some are scrolling through their phones, searching for something — a moment from hours ago, or maybe from years back. Others are eating late-night snacks in silence. Me included.

Everyone’s quiet. Their eyes carry the weight of the day, or the week, or maybe their whole lives. They’re all going somewhere — to a home, or a lover who lives a bit too far, or to a version of themselves they’re trying to get back to.

A grieving train doesn’t have to mean sadness. It can also mean softness. It can mean transition. And maybe that’s all this is. Just a gentle in-between.