All the Moments You've Missed

The hardest part isn’t the missing itself.

It’s that you’re becoming someone they will never meet.

Every year you live past them; you drift further from the person they knew. You make choices they’ll never weigh in on. You change your mind about things they thought they understood about you. You become more yourself, or less, or different — and they’re not here to witness any of it.

They knew a version of you that no one else did. And when they died, it went with them.

That’s a loss underneath the loss.

You also lose the relationship you never get to have. The one that was still unfolding. The conversations you never finished. Where you got more time, more years, more of each other.

You were owed it. And it’s gone now, before it ever arrived.

And there’s this: you keep reaching moments they’re not part of. Birthdays and milestones and long stretches of life that should have included them. You move forward into a future that was supposed to have them in it, and every step takes you somewhere they’ll never follow.

You’re not only missing them.

You’re missing who you would have become if they’d stayed to see it.

The grief that isn’t about the past at all.

It’s about every future they’re not in.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing here, What Remains brings together many of my most meaningful pieces in one place. It’s a collection of writings about grief, love, loss, and the lasting connections that remain.

Available now on Amazon.