What is feels like to lose someone?
Have you ever thought about what losing a loved one feels like in your everyday life? Beyond the initial pain, the feeling that someone has punched you repeatedly in the chest until you can barely breathe. Like you are being held captive in a perpetual nightmare, desperately trying to wake up but unable to escape. Those feelings describe the beginning of grief. But what about the long term? What does it feel like to live with that loss day after day, year after year?
When my dad passed away, my girlfriend explained grief to me in a way I had never heard before. The more I think about her words, the more I realize that her explanation may be the closest we can come to describing the heart-gasping pain of losing someone we love.
She said it is like a wound that continually bleeds. You cannot stop it. You cannot make it disappear. After losing someone you love, you become a bleeding wound, raw, open, and hurting. You try to cover it with temporary Band-Aids so you can function. You go to work. You go through your daily routines. You laugh when you are supposed to laugh. You keep moving because life doesn't stop just because your heart has.
But underneath those Band-Aids, the wound is still bleeding.
Eventually, the bleeding slows. The wound starts to scab over, and for a while, you think maybe you are healing. You learn how to function again. You learn how to live around the empty space they left behind.
But grief has a way of surprising you.
A song. A smell. A photograph. A familiar place. A holiday. A simple sentence someone says without realizing what it means to you. Suddenly, something picks at the scab, and the wound opens again. The pain comes rushing back, sometimes so suddenly that it feels like the loss happened yesterday.
Over time, the wound continues to heal. The pain becomes less sharp. The constant bleeding subsides, and eventually, the hurt begins to feel numb. You learn to function with that numbness. You learn to carry the wound with you everywhere you go.
Then, one day, you realize the scab is gone.
The wound has healed.
But the scar remains.
And maybe that is what long-term grief really is: not forgetting, not completely moving on, and certainly not stopping loving the person you lost. It is learning to live with the scar they left behind. The scar becomes a permanent reminder of someone who mattered so deeply that their absence changed you forever.
The wound may heal.
The bleeding may stop.
The pain may soften.
But the scar remains, always reminding you of what you lost, and of how deeply you loved them.
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