I live so far away from my family and Dad was never much of a phone caller, so the days and months after he died felt strange. There wasn’t a daily call to miss, no regular routine to suddenly leave empty. Instead, the loss settled in, hard to grasp but never far from my thoughts.
It’s been almost two years now, and still, grief catches me off guard. Some days it feels lighter, a gentle ache. Other days, it comes crashing in—a wave of sadness that reminds me of all the conversations we’ll never have.
I find it hardest when I reach milestones, or when I’m caught off guard. I feel a deep longing to tell Dad when I hit a goal. When something I’ve been working towards finally falls into place, I wish to share the good news. He was never one to show his feelings. He never told me outright that he was proud. That was his way: more about actions than words, more about presence than praise.
Growing up, I always hoped to hear those words: “I’m proud of you Sarah.” But they rarely came. And yet, in my heart, I know now that he was proud of me in his own quiet way. Still, in those milestone moments, I wish I could share them with him.
Grief and loss are marked by the conversations I wish we’d had. By the words I always longed to hear. It’s marked by the small moments I wanted to share. It’s a quiet kind of void that lives in the milestones, the achievements, the places that I visit that I know he would have loved to hear about, the little victories that feel incomplete without his subtle nod of interest.
I wanted to write this because I know so many people that are struggling with the grief of loss. I understand how that means so many different things to different people. I talked about this in my earlier article on coping with loss (https://lifeloveandme.co.uk/how-do-we-cope-with-loss/), exploring how grief isn’t just sadness—it’s an entire tapestry of feelings: love, regret, relief, longing, even laughter. It’s not just present when we lose someone through death, but when we say good bye to relationships. Or even an idea of what the future was going to look like, but it never turned out that way.
Grief isn’t just about the person we’ve lost, but about the unique shape of the relationship we had with them. Dad’s absence isn’t marked by a missing place at the table, or a silence on the other end of the phone; it’s marked by all the experiences I’d have shared with him, the questions I’d have asked, the approval I still seek in his absence.
Almost two years on, I’ve realised that grief is about learning to carry that absence alongside the love that remains. Dad is still here, woven into the person I’ve become—in the resilience he taught me, in the experiences I want to keep on having, in the way I show up for others. Even though his approval was unspoken, I know it was there, and that gives me a sense of peace.
I hope that in sharing this, others who are navigating their own grief can find some comfort in knowing they’re not alone. Grief looks different for everyone, but it always reminds us of the love that endures—even in the silence, even in the absence.
