Grief: Everyone handles it differently

(First appeared in The Baldwin Times for Gulf Coast Media, June 19, 2026.)

Aimee Bertucci with her friend David Walters. (Photos courtesy of Aimee Bertucci.)

“Thanks for all you’ve done. I’ve missed you for so long. I can’t believe you’re gone …”

— Opening lyrics from Alter Bridge song, “In Loving Memory”

You never know where a meaningful conversation might begin.

In my case, it started in a Gulf Shores barbershop.

I walked in looking for a haircut a few months ago and walked out having met someone who understood something all too familiar: grief.

Over the course of just a couple of visits, Aimee Bertucci and I discovered we had more in common than either of us expected. We had both come to Gulf Shores looking for a fresh start. We had both experienced significant loss. And we had both learned that moving forward and remembering are not mutually exclusive.

I imagine that hair stylists also double as part-time psychologists, hearing everyone’s problems. Much like a bartender for some people. Think of the Cheers theme song, “..sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name.”

One of the things grief teaches us is that there is no universal roadmap. A close friend in North Alabama told me something similar in the first months after losing Dorinda. She said that my grief would be different than hers, from everyone else’s grief. And that was OK.

People mean well. They offer advice. They tell us what we should do, how long we should grieve, when we should move on and what moving on is supposed to look like.

The truth is much simpler. There is no right way to grieve.

My grief is learning how to live without the person who cared most for me in the world, after 43 years together. Time hasn’t healed.

For Aimee, that grief is tied to the loss of her close friend David Walters, a man whose influence continues to shape her life even a year after his passing. She said he was always like a big brother to her.

Aimee said David was always like a big brother to her.

He died just over a year ago, just ahead of Memorial Day. He was just 50 years old. An Army veteran who had lived in Foley for about eight years, David suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I didn’t realize, and it was hard to understand at first, why the push to do things all the time. But he was showing us all how to live,” Aimee said. “Not be stagnant, always on the move.”

Our brief conversations and handwritten notes she shared with me paint the picture of someone who was fiercely loyal, endlessly supportive and always willing to show up for the people he loved.

He was the kind of friend who would drive across states for a baseball game, gather people around crawfish boils and motorcycle rides, and make sure no one felt left out. One note recalled how he even bought a helmet so a friend could ride along.

More importantly, he believed in people.

Aimee told me she opened her own barbershop because David convinced her she could do it. At a time when she was struggling, he encouraged her to take a chance on herself. She moved here from near New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. But Dave never left her side.

She referenced a song by Linkin Park, “Good Things Go,” saying music has become one of the ways she now processes grief. That’s absolutely true for me, too.

“Dave would always say, ‘What do you have to lose, nothing equals nothing,” Aimee said about advice Dave offered. “Just don’t rush to failure.”

Sometimes the greatest gifts people leave behind are not things. They are confidence, encouragement and belief.

For me, grief looks different.

More than a year after losing my Bear, I still find myself talking about her in these columns. I still think about what she would say in certain situations. I still carry her with me on sunrise walks, baseball trips and quiet moments that arrive unexpectedly. I write this column the morning after another sleepless night, emotional pain compounding physical pain.

Some people write. Some people ride motorcycles. Some people build businesses.

Some people gather with family and tell stories. Some people sit quietly and remember.

There is no right way. There is only your way.

One detail from this story stayed with me.

On April 25, the one-year anniversary of Dorinda's passing, a handful of my new friends here gathered on the beach with me to remember her life. None of them knew Dorinda. Among those attending was Aimee. There were nine of us there. Aimee took several pictures for me, as a friend would do.

Grief introduced us, but friendship is what remained. That’s been the case with a handful of other friends I’ve made here. It’s a reminder that grief often creates unexpected connections.

We never know what battles someone is carrying.

The smiling person behind a counter. The friend sitting beside us.

The stranger we meet in a waiting room, a restaurant or a barbershop.

Many are carrying losses we cannot see. That realization costs us nothing, but it can make us more patient, more understanding and more kind.

Everyone handles grief differently.

And that's OK.

Because as Aimee reminded me, “we all leave an imprint on the people we meet — and even through grief, blooms friendships.”

David getting ready for a bike ride with one of Aimee’s daughters, Isabella.