Grieving is often associated with death, but some of the deepest griefs are for those who are still alive. I wrote this piece for anyone carrying a quiet, complicated grief with no closure… whether through distance, illness, disability, or slow loss. You are not alone.
No Flowers for my Grief
Not all grief begins with death.
Sometimes it starts with a slow disappearance — a gentle fading of who someone once was or waking from the dream of who a loved one would become.
We don’t talk about it: the heartbreak of grieving someone still alive.
This mourning is different — no clear goodbyes, no funeral, no flowers and condolences. There are no rituals for this kind of loss.
Grieving someone still alive confuses the heart. We feel like we have no right to feel grief.
We ask ourselves: Why am I so devastated when they are still here?
But grief doesn’t wait for a heartbeat to stop. It begins the instant something meaningful changes irreversibly.
This kind of grief flares up unexpectedly — in the cereal aisle, at a birthday or on a quiet Tuesday when an old photo flashes on the phone.
The pain is real.
The loss is deep.
And yet the world doesn’t always acknowledge the mourning of someone who is still breathing, or the devastation that comes when things do not unfold the way we had hoped.
Grieving the living requires great kindness towards yourself, and gentleness with your expectations.
Putting a name to this kind of grief means allowing complex emotions to coexist. You may feel love, guilt, anger, longing, hope and despair — all at once. And that is being human.
Sometimes there is healing — through acceptance, reconnection, or transformation. But even if the person never comes back to you, even if it is never quite as you hoped, your grief deserves the same compassion as any other loss.
To grieve someone alive is to walk with an invisible open wound.
Your tears make sense. Your love still matters. And your heart — even if it is breaking — is doing its best to hold on and let go, all at once.
If you know this grief, you are not alone.
There are many of us, carrying quiet stories of love and loss, treasuring what still lives within us.
And even as we grieve, we are learning — slowly, bravely — to live with love in new forms, to cherish what was, and what still is.
© Corine Maxwell, 2025.
All rights reserved.
This article is based on original personal reflections & experiences.
Main – Photo by Nathan Jeon on Unsplash
