They sit across from you, breathing, laughing softly, scrolling their phone. Yet something is missing. The one you knew is already gone. You smile, answer, nod, but your heart is aching over a loss that is known to no one. This is the silent sorrow of losing a person when they are alive.
It starts gradually, like a door closing without a sound. Conversations thin out. Known affection becomes alien. You remember who they were to you, and you miss the one who was like home to you. This type of loss has no funeral. No flowers. No condolences. Just memory, echoing.
You grieve the future you fancied. The shared jokes that will never return. The security in knowing where you stood. Instead, you get to know how to carry absence in your hands and act as if things are fine. This grief is disorienting, in that the society informs you that mourning is only relevant when the other person is gone forever. But the heart knows better.
Some days, you blame yourself. On other days you blame time, pain, growth, change. In the majority of cases, you are left sitting with the questions that are not answered and you learn to live beside them. Loving someone who can no longer meet you where you are teaches a different kind of letting go.
And gradually, gently, you find something that is not expected. Grieving is not an indication that you are weak. It means you loved deeply. Closure does not necessarily lead to healing, acceptance does. You are taught not to pursue that which is impossible, but to value what was. The loss of a living person reveals a truth to you: sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones you never get to say.
