No one ever warns you about the kind of grief that doesn’t come with funerals or flowers. The kind that sneaks in quietly, without casseroles or condolences, and sits beside you long before you understand what you’re mourning. It’s the grief you feel for the living — for people who still breathe the same air, walk the same earth, maybe even sit across from you at the kitchen table — and yet are no longer reachable in the ways that matter.

I’ve known this grief in many forms.

You probably have too.

There’s the grief for the parent who is still physically here but emotionally vanished — not through illness or incapacity, but through distances that built slowly, year by unspoken year. There’s the grief for the friend you once shared everything...

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