Grief isn’t just about the moment someone dies. It’s about all of the things that die with them... The birthdays, the phone calls, the holidays, the talks, every simple and ordinary day that you thought you’d have so many more of.
When I lost my mom, I didn’t just lose her. I lost almost every part of my life that had her in it. The version where she’s in the front row at my wedding. The one where she would get to hold her grandchildren and give all of her love to them, like she always did for me. The one where she answers the phone when I call in tears because sometimes this life is harder than I ever imagined and I know she’d give me the best advice.
She was supposed to be here to grow older and softer, and it would have finally been my turn to care for her the way she always took care of me. But none of that will ever happen and the future I always imagined is now nothing more than a haunting of what should still be.. a life I so badly wish still was.
It’s not just sadness. It’s absence and a void on every level. She’s not just missing from my past and my current life.. she’s missing from my future, too.
And I don’t think we are ever prepared for this part of grief.. the loss we feel for the things that never even happened.
It hits you in the moments that should be full, when something good happens and your first instinct is to tell them, when you’re surrounded by people but none of them can ever replace that bond you had with your loved one.
It’s a strange thing, grieving a life that only existed in your heart and mind, but it’s real and it hurts just as deeply.
So, if you’re grieving a person, but also a future, I hope you know you are not alone. You are allowed to mourn the things they never got to see, the milestones you thought they’d be here for, the inside jokes, the traditions, the growing old together.
Although heartbreaking, that grief is sacred. It means you loved them so much that you built a whole future around them and now you are learning how to carry that love into a life that looks nothing like the one you always pictured..
but it still matters, because they lived and because you still do.
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