How to Grieve Someone Who’s Still Alive
Some losses don’t come with funerals. This is what it feels like to grieve someone who’s still living—when the goodbye isn’t clean, and the ache has no name.
How to Grieve Someone Who’s Still Alive
(And Why It Hurts Even When They’re Not Gone)
There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t come with sympathy cards.
No rituals. No casseroles. No one checking in to see how you’re holding up. Because the person you’re grieving is still alive and that makes it so much harder.
You Don’t Always Lose Them All At Once
Sometimes it happens slowly.
In conversations that don’t land anymore.
In moments where you realise they’ve stopped asking how you are.
In the version of them that’s still here but not the one who used to see you.
And sometimes it happens fast.
An argument.
A betrayal.
A choice they made that you can’t walk with.
But either way, you’re left holding a love that has nowhere to go.
It’s Real Grief. Even Without a Death Certificate.
People say, "But they’re not gone."
As if physical presence is the same as emotional closeness.
As if the absence you feel is less valid because you could still call them, technically.
But what do you say when the person on the other end of the line is no longer the one you miss? When the relationship changed shape and never shifted back?
This is grief.
Without closure.
Without ceremony.
Without permission.
You're Allowed to Mourn What You Thought You’d Always Have
Maybe it was a parent who couldn’t meet you halfway.
A friend who quietly stopped showing up.
A partner who checked out before they walked out.
Whatever the shape the pain is real.
You’re mourning a version of connection you thought was safe. Permanent. Reciprocal.
It’s okay if you haven’t fully let go yet.
It’s okay if you don’t want to.
But you’re still grieving and that deserves to be named.
You Don’t Have to Justify the Ache
Grief doesn’t always make sense.
It doesn’t wait for context or consensus.
It comes when something mattered.
When someone mattered.
Even if they’re still breathing.
You don’t need to explain it.
Or rush it.
Or shrink it just because the world doesn’t understand it.
Some relationships end in silence, others in distance.
Some in slow, steady forgetting.
But the heartbreak is still yours to hold.
And you’re allowed to feel all of it.
Without apology.
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