The Long Goodbye
If you're reading this, you may be dwelling in that strange in-between space where someone you love is still here, but you can already feel the shape of their absence. You're holding two truths at once: “we’re together today” and “we’re losing each other.” It’s called anticipatory grief… it’s exhausting.
This kind of grief can feel incredibly lonely, even when surrounded by people. Tears might arrive while your person is still alive, and guilt might arrive with them. Anger can flare at the sheer unfairness of it all. Some days closeness feels like oxygen. Other days, closeness burns. Love and loss can sit in the same heart, in the same hour, in the same breath.
Contradictions don’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It’s possible to hope for the best and stay realistic. To laugh from the belly followed by bone-deep sobbing before the kettle boils. To crave solitude and ache for company. All of it belongs to the same fierce love.
So how to endure the impossible and keep enough balance to survive? Because that’s the aim here—survive and stay a little human while doing it.
There’s plenty of advice out there, but there’s no single “right way.” The path that fits is the one that feels honest in your mouth. Sometimes this time becomes its own identity, with a name like “the waiting room,” or “the in-between,” or something more expressive maybe. A name can put a small break between you and the storm, enough space to breathe and think.
But there’s often a subtext to the story of this time. It says be strong, don’t make it about you, nothing else matters now. Underneath that script, other sounds keep humming—loyalty, stubborn hope, the kind of humour that turns up uninvited and makes the room more human. Double-listening happens - the loud story of dread on one station, the quieter story of love on another. Both are true; one doesn’t erase the other.
Days in this season have their own weather. Attention drifts, time stretches and then snaps back. Ten minutes can be a whole afternoon, or an afternoon can vanish in a single long blink. The body often tries to anchor itself without being asked—feet press into the floor, shoulders remember how to drop a fraction, lungs find a longer exhale than the inhale. None of it fixes anything; but it marks a place that is here.
Rituals tend to appear, small and ordinary. Tea in the favourite cup. The same song to start the morning. A candle at dusk. Hand cream rubbed into familiar hands. These little repetitions don’t deny fear; they make room for dignity alongside it. The day gathers a bit of shape. The story thickens around what matters - care, presence, tenderness that doesn’t need big words.
Off-script moments still happen and they deserve their place in the story too. A bad joke that gets a snort. A square of winter sun sliding across a blanket. An old photo releasing a new story into the room. They don’t fix anything either. They prove that life keeps finding cracks to slip through.
All the while, the story stays honest. Anticipatory grief is love wearing work boots. It rubs blisters and still keeps walking toward what matters. There isn’t a neat method for this—only the way that fits the people in the room. One plain sentence. One sip of water. One steadying breath. Not as instructions, but as the small, human marks a day can carry when the big things are unmovable.
If this is your season, nothing here tells you what to do. It just names the room you’re in and keeps you company while you’re in it.