Grief is hearing their favorite song
 and suddenly forgetting how to breathe. 
It’s avoiding the places they loved 
because you can’t bear to sit where they should be sitting,
 or order the meal they’ll never taste again.
 It’s the guilt that whispers,
”If I had just done one thing differently…”
 even when you know you couldn’t have changed the ending.

Grief is driving home 
to a space that feels too quiet,
 too hollow, 
too aware of what’s missing. 
It’s walking through rooms
 that echo with memories
 you didn’t ask to remember today.

It’s talking to the sky
 like it might talk back.
 Searching the clouds for a sign, 
any sign
that they’re still tethered to you somehow. 
It’s speaking into the air
 hoping they hear you, even if no one else understands why you keep trying.

Grief is the way their absence 
shows up everywhere:
 in the songs, 
the meals,
 the streets you avoid,
 the moments you catch yourself
 reaching for someone
 who isn’t coming back.

It’s carrying a love
 that still wants to be given, 
a love with so much left to offer,
 but no arms to hold it,
 no voice to answer it, 
no place to lay it down.
 Not love with nowhere to go, 
love with nowhere to land.

A love still alive 
in a world where they are not.

It is a weight only the grieving truly understand, 
a silent language spoken inside the chest,
 a story you continue living
 even after they can no longer respond.

And if you’re carrying that story,
 you don’t have to carry it alone.

— Japnam Deol, Master of Social Work, Registered Social Worker