Grief

I used to think grief belonged only to death.

When I was younger, I believed grief was something we experienced only after losing someone forever. I watched my grandmother slowly fade after my grandfather died. They had spent a lifetime together, and after he was gone, she would often sit reading the letters he had written to her when they were young. No one could explain why she never seemed to recover.

Years later, I watched my mother grieve my father. She cried often and slipped into a deep depression. It took a long time before life began to feel familiar again. Even now, she sometimes misses him deeply.

When I lost my first son, I cried in a way that words could never fully describe. Perhaps I still grieve him in ways that have become part of who I am.

For many years, I thought those experiences defined grief.

The older I become, the less certain I am that grief belongs only to death.

Now I wonder if grief begins the moment love can no longer be lived in the way we imagined.

Life has taught me that grief wears many faces. It can follow death, but it can also arrive after a goodbye, the end of a marriage, a child leaving home, or simply the realisation that someone you care deeply about cannot remain part of your everyday life.

The circumstances may be different, but the ache feels familiar.

I have come to believe that grief happens because we have loved someone who mattered deeply.

I have often wondered why grief can feel so physical. We speak of a broken heart as though it is only a figure of speech, yet medicine recognises a condition known as broken heart syndrome, where intense emotional stress can temporarily affect the heart itself. It reminds us that grief is not only something we carry in our thoughts. Sometimes our bodies carry it too.

I have also found myself wondering about something else.

Some people believe that when we love deeply, we begin to carry a little of another person’s joy and sorrow as though they have become our own. Others describe it as an exchange of energy. I don’t know whether either is true. But I have often wondered whether love allows us to feel another person’s grief more deeply than we otherwise could.

Perhaps that is simply empathy.

Or perhaps it is one of those mysteries that cannot be explained.

The deepest joys in our lives are often rooted in our relationships. Perhaps that is why our deepest griefs are too.

Maybe grief is not the opposite of love.

Perhaps grief is love that has nowhere left to go because the person we love is no longer part of our daily lives, whether they have died, left, or life simply unfolded at the wrong time.

Perhaps grief is not only what follows death. Perhaps it begins the moment love can no longer be lived as we hoped.

Maybe grief isn’t something we recover from completely.

Maybe it simply changes shape, just as love does.