Losses Within the Loss

When someone we love dies, we grieve the person we lost.

We miss their voice, their laughter, their presence, and all the little things that made them uniquely them.

But grief extends beyond the absence of the person we love.

There are losses within the loss that we couldn't possibly recognize in the beginning. They reveal themselves as life unfolds.

We may grieve the future we thought we would have.

The birthdays they would have celebrated.

The vacations we thought we'd take.

The graduations and weddings they would attend.

The grandchildren they would meet.

The conversations we assumed we'd have someday.

But the losses within the loss can reach even further.

Relationships may change. Traditions may never feel quite the same. Places that once brought joy can feel different. We may even grieve parts of ourselves and the life we knew before everything changed.

We couldn't possibly understand the full reach of our loss in the beginning. Some losses can only be discovered when we arrive at them.

A milestone happens.

A family photograph is taken.

Someone announces an engagement or a new baby.

A familiar tradition comes around again.

And suddenly, we encounter another piece of the loss we hadn't yet lived.

I think that's one of the reasons grief can still surprise us years later.

It isn't necessarily that we have gone backward or that something is wrong.

Sometimes life has simply brought us to a loss we are experiencing for the first time.

Others may see how much time has passed. We see the person who should be standing in the photograph.

They see a celebration. We feel the absence woven through it.

Both can exist at the same time.

We can be grateful for what is here while still grieving who is not.

Because we didn't only lose someone we loved.

We lost pieces of a life connected to theirs—some we knew about then, and others we would only discover with time.

We couldn't grieve all of those losses in the beginning.

We hadn't lived them yet.