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I Hold Grief for My Sister Who Still Lives
Some losses don’t come with funerals. Only silence.
When people speak of grief, they usually mean death. A funeral. A last breath. Something irreversible.
But what about when the person you lost is still alive?
My sister and I haven’t spoken in years. There was no blow-up, no dramatic final fight. Just a slow fading. Messages that stopped being returned. Birthdays that passed without acknowledgement. Eventually, silence became our only form of communication.
For a long time, I didn’t know what to call the ache. It wasn’t exactly heartbreak, but it throbbed in familiar places. I missed her. I missed who we used to be. I missed the shared language of siblings, the weird inside jokes, the quiet shorthand for survival.
But I also knew something deeper. I wasn’t safe in that relationship anymore.
There’s a particular kind of grief that comes from choosing to let go of someone you love. Not because you stopped caring, but because staying was costing you too much. It’s the kind of grief that doesn’t get talked about enough. The kind without sympathy cards or casseroles. People understand death. But they don’t always understand the kind of loss that comes from choosing yourself.
