How To Heal Without Closure

When they leave, but never really go

Photo by the Author

After a dozen therapy sessions later.. I’ve finally arrived here, at this moment, on this page. I’m still standing. Still learning. Still grieving. And if you’ve ever carried grief in silence, I hope you feel seen in these words.

Because I’m with you.

The Beginning of Us

My mother was a single parent who wore both hats — mother and father — for my younger brother and me. She gave everything she had to make us feel whole again. And somehow, even in her exhaustion, she loved loudly.

After she left my father, we became inseparable. She and I raised my brother hand in hand.

I was eight. He was six.

With barely enough emotional capacity for myself, I carried her pain and joy like it was mine. I tried to put her back together, piece by piece, with all the tenderness a child could offer. And I did — until the pieces started slipping again.

The First Goodbye

A few years later, she remarried. My stepdad came into our lives, and everything changed. That’s when I first felt like I lost her — not physically, but emotionally. Something had shifted. Something sacred between us became silent.

I tried to adapt to this new reality, to this relationship that now had a third person woven into it. But the space grew. And in that space, I began to quietly meet the real version of myself — the one who no longer fit into the story we used to share.

The Second Goodbye

Eventually, I left home with two suitcases, a nervous heart, and a head full of dreams. I was moving abroad to study, and it felt like I was finally stepping into the life I had worked so hard to earn.

I was excited. Hopeful. Ready.

But no one warns you that leaving home for something good can still break your heart.

At first, it didn’t feel like anything had changed. We talked almost every day — quick calls, voice notes, long messages, and random photos. I would tell her about my new housemates, she would tell me how my brother was adjusting to school.

It was our way of staying close and pretending the ocean between us didn’t exist. But over time, the days started to stretch.

She once got upset.

I still remember her voice — gentle, but hurt. She told me she felt like I was slipping away. And maybe I was.

I had started building a life at this new place. I was meeting new people. I had class, a part-time job, and a routine that didn’t revolve around home anymore.

I wasn’t trying to leave her behind, but I was trying to belong somewhere new. And in trying to find myself, I think I forgot how much she still needed me to stay the version of me she once held so close.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the second goodbye. The one where the leaving wasn’t loud or final — just gradual and subtle, like the kind you don’t notice until it’s already happened.

The silly thing is, I thought we still had time. Time.. what a concept. I thought we would have more of it — enough for us to reconnect one day, to find our way back to each other.

But some goodbyes don’t wait for closure, and the next one came far too soon.

The Final Goodbye

Three years after I left, my mother passed.

It was sudden. Unexpected.
Another pang of betrayal.
She left me again.
And this time, it was for good.

Had I known our time was shorter than I thought, I probably would have said something. Anything. Instead, I’m left with all these words I never got to say. All this love to give, but nowhere to place it.

It’s a strange kind of ache —
One that doesn’t scream,
But sits heavy in the chest,
Whispering what-ifs and almosts.

The pain? Unbearable.
Some days, it still is.

I searched and found her in everything.
In the way my phone’s notification lit up.
In the way I saw her name on the street.
In voices that sounded like hers.
In dreams that faded too quickly.

I found her everywhere.
And nowhere.
All at once.

“You’ll always be my best friend.”
At least, I could’ve told her that.

But maybe she already knew.
Maybe she felt it.
Maybe she carried it the same way I did — quietly, constantly, completely.

Grief is funny that way.
It arrives with silence, lingers in echoes,
and somehow grows heavier with every word left unsaid.

A year later

I didn’t show up at her memorial.
Some might say that it’s selfish, but here’s what I’ve slowly come to realize:

Every ounce of love I can no longer give to her, I owe to myself.
Because she’s no longer here to love me the way she once did.
And someone still has to.

The incident — the whole situation — still haunts me. I was in survival mode, just trying to get through the days. The thought of showing up to grieve publicly, to accept condolences I didn’t know how to hold, felt like a performance I wasn’t ready to give.

So, yes — I chose not to go.
I chose to protect myself.
And deep down, I believe she would have wanted that too.

So, where does this leave us?

It took waves of denial, sleepless nights, and more tissues than I can count before I could finally sit down and speak about her.

Somewhere along this long, quiet journey of learning to carry her without her, it became clear to me that the hardest part of grief isn’t just the absence — it’s the after.

It’s the ordinary mornings when you wake up and, for a brief moment, everything feels normal.. Until it doesn’t — and your mind quietly reminds you that they are gone.

In the stillness that follows after, while I carry this huge, gaping hole in the middle of my heart, something finally made sense to me:

Our relationship didn’t end just because I can’t physically see her anymore.
It simply changed form.

You might wonder, Will you ever be okay again?

No. Probably not.
This hole in my chest might never fully close, no matter how many therapy sessions I go to.
The love I want to give her might never stop coming —
And God, I hope it doesn’t.

Because love like that doesn’t just disappear.
It transforms.

What Grief Teaches Us (Even When We’re Not Ready to Learn)

Grief doesn’t follow a straight line.
It doesn’t arrive with instruction manuals, and it certainly doesn’t leave quietly.

It lingers —
In the echoes,
In the empty chairs,
In the words we never got to say.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned and could share, it’s this:
Closure is not a door that someone else has to close for you.

It’s something you build, slowly, and gently, within yourself.

It’s the space you create to carry love and pain at the same time.

It’s the paradox you hold, the quiet sacrifice you make for having loved them that deeply.

You don’t need to have the perfect goodbye.
You don’t need to have said all the right things.
And you don’t have to “move on” to move forward.

Instead —
Let the love that has nowhere to go return to you.
Let your grief shape you gently, not define you.
Let their memory become your mirror, not your cage.
And let healing be messy, quiet, and entirely yours.

To the ones left behind,
I see you.
I see you floating as if gravity hasn’t quite claimed you.
I see you grieving for what was and what could have been.
I see you surviving each day as the world keeps spinning —
even when yours has stopped since the day they left.

To you who stayed,
Thank you for holding on, even when it hurt.
Thank you for walking through fire with bare feet.
Thank you for the tears in silence, and still choosing softness.
Thank you for offering love, even when you are the one bleeding.
Thank you for choosing to stay, when leaving might’ve been easier.

You made it through the storm —
And they’re proud of you.
Someday, you will be proud of yourself too.

Why I Wrote This

This piece was born from a poem I wrote a few months before she passed — words I never knew would one day return to me for comfort.

“Reflection” was how I first started telling our story.
And now, it’s how I continue it.
She was (and still is) my best friend. I was her confidant.
We were the best partners in crime.

This is for her.
And for every grieving heart that’s still learning to carry love without closure.

Reflection by N.P

Shock-absorber
that was the first time I heard it
a term I never knew existed,
yet describes what it was all along.

I was your living shock-absorber
every pain and happiness you experienced,
I became one with them all.

Every present and past,
you engraved into my mind and heart.
Too many times,
I thought I lived them.

Each night, crying myself to sleep,
I wondered how I would survive tomorrow —
but when the morning came,
I smiled the brightest and puts other first.

The smell of cigarette chokes me,
yet I find comfort in the sweet puffs
The way I desperately love, knowing it will hurt —
but told myself it was just another lesson learned.

That’s when I look up at the mirror
and see bits of you growing in me.
The good, the bad —
my version of you grows stronger

And each day,
I curse and bless them.
It’s a paradoxical tragedy —
of a mother and daughter relationship