Grieving Your Parents: A Love Letter to Loss, Legacy, and Letting Go
There is no grief like the grief for a parent. It’s a rupture that splits time in two... before and after. It’s not just about losing a person. It’s about losing the home you came from. The voice that always answered the phone. The eyes that saw you before the world told you who to be. Whether the relationship was perfect, complicated, or somewhere in between, losing a parent shakes the foundation of who you are.
Grief Isn’t Linear... It’s a Landscape
Grieving a parent doesn’t follow a neat five-step plan. It’s not something you “get over.” It’s something you learn to carry. Some days you’ll feel okay. Other days, a song, a scent, or an empty chair will hit you like a wave you never saw coming. That’s normal. Grief is love with nowhere to go, so it circles back in tears, memories, or even laughter at the things they used to say. Don’t rush to be “strong.” Don’t apologize for still hurting. Grief doesn’t respect calendars.
You Grieve Who They Were... And Who They Weren’t
For some, losing a parent is losing your hero. For others, it’s losing a complicated figure. A source of both love and pain. And sometimes, grief comes with guilt, regret, or unspoken words. That’s real, too. You can grieve what you had and what you wished you had. You can miss the person and acknowledge their flaws. Healing doesn’t require rewriting history. It requires telling the truth with compassion.
The Unexpected Parts of Grief
No one prepares you for the small griefs: deleting their number, clearing out their closet, hearing someone say “your mom” or “your dad” in past tense. You don’t just lose the person. You lose the routines, the traditions, the inside jokes, the place you once called home. And yet, somehow, the world keeps spinning while yours feels stuck. Every ten in the morning used to be morning skype or messenger calls with my folks. Every now and then and still pause at that hour thinking about calling them.
Let it be stuck. Give yourself permission to pause, to remember, to fall apart and build yourself back slowly.
Their Legacy Lives in You
Here’s the part no one tells you: your parents live on in more than just memory. They live in the way you laugh. The recipes you cook. The lessons you pass down. The phrases that slip out of your mouth that sound just like them. Grief is the proof that love existed. It still does.
In time, grief softens. It doesn’t disappear, but it reshapes. It becomes a part of your story. Not the whole thing, but a sacred chapter. You’ll carry them forward, not as a shadow, but as a light.
To grieve a parent is to love them across time and space. It’s to honor where you came from, even as you learn to keep going without them. It’s to be a mosaic of memory, love, pain, and resilience. You don’t have to grieve perfectly. You just have to grieve honestly.
If you’re in the middle of this loss, know this: you’re not alone. Your heart may be broken, but it is still beating and that beat carries their rhythm.
Warm and tight hug, Pau.
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