What Remains

This past week, I buried two people I loved. Two funerals within days of each other, one for a woman who had lived a long and full life, and one for a young man who had barely started his.

Grief is strange like that. It does not arrive the same way twice.

When the older one passed, I was upset. Genuinely upset. But there was something underneath the sadness that felt almost like readiness; she had been sick, the family had carried the knowledge of her fragility for a while, and so when the news came, it landed on a heart that had already, quietly, begun to prepare itself. We mourned her, yes. But we also celebrated her. Her children, her grandchildren, the decades of a life well-lived, it felt less like an ending and more like a closing ceremony. A final bow after a long and meaningful performance.

The second one was different.

He was young. His death came from an accident; sudden, without warning, without logic. One moment he was here, and then he simply was not. No time to brace. No time to hold him tighter. No final conversation. Just news, breaking like glass, and then silence.

I was devastated. And I think the difference in how I felt was not just about age, it was about the abruptness. It was about the incompleteness of it all. It was about being forced to face the fact that death does not negotiate, does not warn, does not apologize. It simply ends things. That is all it does. It ends them.

Do they grieve themselves?

Sitting with that silence, a thought crept in and refused to leave. When we are the ones left behind, we grieve. We cry, we hold each other, we speak their names like prayers. But what about them? In the moment of departure wherever they go, do they grieve too?

Picture the older woman. She lived fully. She loved and was loved. Her body gave out slowly, and she had time, perhaps to make peace. Maybe when she crossed over, she looked back at everything she had built, every person she had held, and she smiled. A quiet, satisfied smile. Yes. I did that. I was here, and it mattered. I imagine her looking down at the tears of her grandchildren and feeling not sorrow, but the warmth of knowing she was that loved.

But what about him? The young one, full of life, full of plans, dreams that had names and deadlines and people attached to them. Did he cross over and feel it? The weight of all that unfinished living? Did he think about his parents? Did something in him ache with the knowledge that they would wake up the next morning and reach for him, and find air? Did he grieve his own absence?

I left. And they don’t know why. And they didn’t get to say goodbye.

I don’t know the answer. I do not think anyone does. But the question sat with me, heavy for a long time.

What I am really saying.

I knew, before this week, that life was fragile. I think most of us know this in the abstract, we have heard it enough, been told it in enough eulogies, read it in enough captions after tragedy. We know it.

But knowing something and feeling it are two entirely different things. And this week, I felt it.

The usual version of this lesson goes: life is short, so love the people around you like they might not be here tomorrow.

And yes, that is true. Hold people tighter. Say the things. Check in. Show up. All of that is true.

But I want to say something slightly different. Something that sat with me more uncomfortably, more personally.

Life is so fragile that if you care about someone, if you truly love them, treat them like YOU  might not be here tomorrow. Not them. You.

Because it is easy to hold love back and tell yourself there is more time. More time to forgive. More time to call. More time to say the thing you have been meaning to say. But what if the time runs out on your end? What if you are the one who doesn’t come home?

The young man did not know he would not return. He left that day with all his plans intact, all his words unsaid, all his love stored up for later. And then there was no later.

So this is my reminder, to myself, first, before anyone else. Be the one who loves loudly, who shows up fully, who does not save affection for a more convenient moment. Not because the people around you are leaving, but because you might be. Any one of us might be.

This week was heavy. But heavy weeks have a way of teaching things that light ones never could.

Rest well, both of you.

-Lois ✨