Grief, Love and What Remains

Reflections on grief, love, and learning to carry what cannot be changed

I was barely ten years old when I first encountered grief.

My best friend, his sister and their father had gone away on a family holiday. We had made plans to catch up when he returned, as we always did. We were inseparable, and I had every reason to believe that life would continue just as it always had.

But they never came home.

A car accident had taken all three of their lives.

I can still remember exactly where I was standing in our kitchen when my mother broke the news. Even now, all these years later, that moment remains etched in my memory.

I remember arguing with her, insisting that she was wrong, that she didn't know what she was talking about. It simply couldn't be true.

After all, my best friend was only away on holiday. We had plans. He was coming back.

And somewhere inside, despite what I had been told, I held on to the belief that he would still ride his bicycle up to our house on the day he was meant to return, just as he always had.

I waited for something that would never happen.

But there is another memory from that time that has never left me.

I remember his mother wrapping her arms around me, holding me tightly and telling me that I was going to be okay.

Even as a child, I struggled to understand how someone who had just lost her husband and her only two children could find the strength to comfort me. Her own world had been turned upside down in an instant, yet somehow, in the midst of her unimaginable sorrow, she found room for mine.

I can still remember that embrace and the reassurance she offered me, all these years later.

Looking back, I realise that even as a child, I was learning something profoundly human about grief.

Sometimes our minds hear the news of a loss long before our hearts can begin to comprehend it. And sometimes, even in the deepest sorrow, love finds a way to reach beyond our own pain.

The Many Faces of Grief

Years later, in my final year of high school, I lost another very dear friend and classmate in a car accident. Even now, decades later, I occasionally find myself wondering about the life he might have lived.

Over the years, grief has continued to weave its way through my life. I have sat beside loved ones in their final moments, held hands as life slipped away, and said goodbye to family members whose absence continues to be deeply felt.

More recently, our family has experienced further heartbreaking losses, including one just last month. Each goodbye has carried its own sorrow, its own memories, and its own place in our hearts.

And as the first anniversary of my father's unexpected passing approaches, I find myself reflecting once again on the many ways grief touches our lives.

I can still hear his voice as clearly as if we had spoken only yesterday. The familiar tone of our telephone conversations, his mannerisms, the sound of his laughter. All of it remains so vivid in my memory that, at times, it feels almost impossible to reconcile with the reality of his absence.

How can someone feel so present in our memories, yet be so painfully absent from our lives?

Perhaps that is one of grief's greatest contradictions. We can know, without question, that someone has died, yet still find ourselves struggling to make sense of a world in which they are no longer here.

Every loss is different. Every relationship leaves its own imprint.

Grief can arrive as overwhelming sadness, but it can also appear as disbelief, anger, exhaustion, numbness, or an unexpected wave of emotion in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day.

Sometimes it is the big occasions that hurt. Birthdays. Christmas. Anniversaries.

Other times, it is something remarkably small.

A familiar song. An empty chair. A story you instinctively reach for the phone to share, before remembering there is no longer anyone on the other end to answer.

Grief has a way of making the ordinary feel extraordinary, simply because someone is no longer there to share it.

Does Grief Ever Get Smaller?

I sometimes wonder whether grief ever really gets smaller, or whether we simply learn to make more room for it.

There is a beautiful way of understanding grief, often referred to as Growing Around Grief.

Imagine your grief as a circle within the larger circle of your life.

In the beginning, grief can seem to fill almost every available space. It colours your thoughts, interrupts your routines and makes it difficult to imagine life feeling normal again.

But slowly, sometimes almost without noticing, life begins to expand around it.

A new memory is made. A friendship deepens. You find yourself laughing at something unexpected. Perhaps, for the first time in a long while, you experience a moment of happiness without immediately feeling guilty.

The grief hasn't necessarily disappeared or even become smaller.

But your life has begun to grow around it.

And perhaps that is one of the most comforting things about grief. We don't have to choose between remembering someone we love and continuing to embrace the life that remains.

There can be room for both.

Making Room for What Remains

Perhaps one of the hardest things about grief is the expectation that, eventually, we should be over it.

But love doesn't operate according to a timetable, and neither does grief.

There is no universal measure of how long someone should mourn, how often they should cry, or when they should begin to feel like themselves again.

Sometimes healing looks like talking about the person we have lost. Sometimes it means allowing ourselves to cry. Sometimes it is simply getting through a difficult day without expecting more of ourselves than we can give.

And sometimes, it is giving ourselves permission to laugh again without feeling guilty.

Although we most often associate grief with death, we can also grieve the loss of a marriage, a relationship, our health, a career, or a future we had imagined. At its heart, grief is often our response to losing something or someone that held deep meaning in our lives.

Whatever its source, grief deserves compassion rather than comparison.

Love Doesn't End Where Life Does

As I reflect on the losses that have shaped my life, I am increasingly aware that grief is not simply about what has been taken away.

It is also about what remains.

The memories. The lessons. The conversations. The laughter. The love that continues to influence who we are, long after someone is gone.

I still think about that little boy on his bicycle.

I still remember the friend whose future I never got to witness.

I think fondly, too, of our dear family members we have lost along the way. I miss their presence, reminisce about the moments we shared, and hold close the memories and love they left behind.

And as I approach a year without my father, I am learning once again that missing someone and moving forward are not opposites.

Perhaps hope in grief isn't about reaching a place where we no longer feel the loss.

Perhaps it is about discovering that even with the loss, there is still room for love, connection, meaning and moments of genuine joy.

Because while death may change the way we experience someone's presence, it does not erase the significance of their place in our lives.

And sometimes, learning to live with grief begins not by asking ourselves how to leave it behind, but by gently discovering how to carry it alongside us.

Reference: Tonkin, L. (1996). Growing around grief: Another way of looking at grief and recovery. Bereavement Care, 15(1), 10.