Every kind of loss

The world has a ranking for loss, and almost nobody agrees to it out loud.

A parent counts. A grandparent, apparently, less. A sibling gets folded into your parents' grief. A partner you never married, a friend who was really family, someone you were estranged from, someone who hurt you, more than one person in the same brutal year. All of it lands somewhere below where it should.

These pieces are for the losses that get ranked last, or ranked wrong, or not ranked at all. For the person you actually lost, in the relationship you actually had.

Your grief does not have to win an argument about whether it counts. It counts.

• "Losing a twin: the grief that started in the womb"A twin is the person you were beside before you were born. On grieving the missing half, the identity built around being one of two, and a loss most people have no frame for.
• "Grieving a death from the pandemic years"Deaths in the pandemic years came with a second wound: no bedside, no funeral, a goodbye over a screen. On grieving a loss the world was too overwhelmed to mark, and why it can feel unfinished.
• "The rainbow baby: pregnancy after a loss"A pregnancy after losing a baby holds joy and terror in the same body. On loving one baby without replacing another, the anxiety that shadows every scan, and grief that does not end because hope arrives.
• The adult orphan: when both your parents are goneWhen both parents have died, "adult orphan" stops sounding melodramatic and starts sounding accurate. On the dark-humour club, the aloneness that is mostly admin, and the maths of telling someone new.
• Baby loss: grieving a life measured in weeks, or hours, or hopesMiscarriage, stillbirth, a baby who lived hours or days. On grieving a whole future when the world saw only a pregnancy, the loneliness of a loss others don't count, and why your baby counts.
• "Double grief: losing a sibling, and watching your parents break"When an adult sibling dies you grieve twice: the loss of the person who knew your whole life, and the loss of watching your parents come apart. Why sibling grief gets ranked last, the caregiver role you fall into, and permission to grieve your own loss fully.
• Do you go to the funeral of someone who hurt you?When the person who died also caused you harm, deciding whether to attend the funeral is its own kind of grief. Both going and staying away can be the honest choice, and neither settles the grieving underneath.
• Grieving more than one person at onceWhen several losses land close together, grief stops taking turns and stacks. Why compounded and cumulative grief feels like numbness and guilt, why you never got to finish one before the next began, and why none of it means you are doing grief wrong.
• Grieving someone you were estranged fromWhen someone you were no longer speaking to dies, grief arrives tangled with relief, guilt and anger. On mourning the relationship you never got, and why estranged grief is often the most complicated kind.
• Losing a child: the loss with no word for itThere's no word for a parent who loses a child, because the language refuses what nature refuses. On grief against the order of things, the future taken, and why this loss is held apart from all the others.
• Losing a friend: grief with no official standingWhen a friend dies, you get no bereavement leave and no seat at the front of the funeral, yet you've lost someone who was really family. On disenfranchised grief, and mourning the person who knew the real you.
• Losing a grandparent: the grief the world quietly ranks as minorA grandparent's death is treated as expected, gentle, barely worth a day off. On grieving the person who made you feel unconditionally safe, and why "they had a good innings" misses the whole point.
• Losing a pet: the grief people expect you to be over by MondayA pet's death is a real bereavement, and the world treats it like a minor inconvenience. On the daily-rhythm grief of losing an animal, the guilt of the last decision, and why "it was just a dog" misses everything.
• Losing a sibling: the grief that gets folded into everyone else'sWhen a sibling dies, the world asks how your parents are. On the forgotten mourner, losing the person who shared your whole childhood, and becoming an only child or the last one left.
• Losing a partner you never marriedWhen your partner dies and you weren't married, the world reaches for the wrong word and the law reaches past you. On being called their "friend" at the funeral, and grieving a whole shared life with no title to hold it.
• Losing someone to addiction: the grief that started long before they diedWhen addiction takes someone, you've often been grieving them for years already. On the exhaustion, the guilt, the relief you can't admit, the stigma, and grieving a person the world reduces to how they died.
• Losing someone to suicide: the grief that comes with a questionSuicide loss is grief with a question mark carved into it, and a silence nobody else knows how to break. On the guilt, the why, the stigma, and why survivors of suicide loss deserve real support, not judgement.
• Grieving as an only childWhen you lose a parent as an only child, there is no sibling to split the admin or the memory with. On carrying the whole thing alone, and where the shared weight goes.
• When there was no goodbye: grieving a sudden deathA heart attack, an accident, a phone call that split your life in two. On the shock that isn't weakness, the unfinished conversation, the trauma of no goodbye, and grieving a loss you never got to brace for.
• Young widowhood: losing your person before anyone your age hasWidowed young, while your friends are planning weddings and second babies. On the word that doesn't fit, the future that vanished, and grieving a whole shared life when nobody around you can imagine it.