Living With What Cannot Be Fixed

By Cliff Potts

August 12, 2026 – 2105

One of the harder parts of grief is learning to live with what cannot be fixed.

That goes against a lot of instinct. Most of us are built to solve problems, make adjustments, try again, hold on a little longer, or look for some angle that might still change the outcome. That way of thinking works well in ordinary life. It does not work very well with death.

Death does not negotiate.

It does not respond to effort, cleverness, sincerity, prayer, planning, or fatigue. It simply remains what it is. That is why grief wears people down so badly. It is not only pain. It is helplessness. It is the repeated discovery that the thing you would correct if you could is the one thing that cannot be corrected.

So you live with it.

Not because you like it. Not because you approve of it. Not because you have made peace with it in some polished or holy way. You live with it because the alternative is to spend all your strength fighting a wall that never moves.

That is not surrender. It is recognition.

Some wounds in life can be treated. Some mistakes can be repaired. Some losses can be replaced. But there are also absences that simply become part of the structure. They do not improve because you argue with them. They only become more familiar.

That is what people often misunderstand. Living with what cannot be fixed is not the same as being fine. It is not a cheerful adaptation. It is a long adjustment to reality as it actually is.

And sometimes reality is cruel.

Still, the days continue. The work continues. The body rises, the mind thinks, the world makes its demands, and the unfinished parts of life go on asking to be lived.

So you live them.

Not because the loss has become smaller, but because the life around it still remains.

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