On Grief

Recently, I went on a trip with my flatmates. Before we left, I had suggested a book to one of them to read during the vacation. In the book, the protagonist’s boyfriend passes away. The protagonist is devastated. She describes how the world continues functioning normally—how the garbage man still comes, and people carry on with their lives—while her own life stands still. She takes a break from college, unable to go on as usual.

When my flatmate read this part, she remarked how “ridiculous” it was for the protagonist to expect the world to stop for her. I replied that maybe the protagonist wasn’t expecting the world to stop, but was simply overwhelmed by her grief, unable to function. My flatmate countered with a comment about how the world doesn’t work that way.

While I understand that the world doesn’t stop for anyone, the protagonist’s feelings are perfectly natural. Her reaction made me wonder: has my flatmate never experienced the loss of someone close to her? Perhaps she doesn’t understand how grief works. This thought made me angry—not at her lack of experience, but at how my own experience with loss has shaped me. Because I’ve lived through it, I empathize, probably to a fault, with such emotions.

It has been ten years since I lost my brother. I’ve never really written about it or talked about it at length. I’ve shared bits and pieces with friends and people I’ve met, but I rarely bring it up. It’s difficult to talk about, and I sometimes feel that people don’t truly understand. Like so many who have endured such loss, I don’t want pity.

Even though I don’t speak of him often, I think about him daily. I have vivid dreams where he’s present. In fact yesterday I had a dream where he was present, only to wake and realise that this is not my reality. On special occasions—like when I got engaged this year—I think about how much more joyful it would have been if he had been there.

Sometimes, when I’m having too much fun, I feel a pang of guilt that he’s not here to experience these moments with me. I often wonder what kind of siblings we would have grown into. Would we still argue? Or would we have become close, covering for each other like partners in crime?

I’m very close to my parents and rarely lie to them about my whereabouts. They knew about my boyfriend long before we decided to get married. But sometimes I wonder if, had my brother been alive, I would have shared such things with him instead, sparing my parents the details.

In the ten years since his passing, one thing I’ve come to understand is that you never truly “move on” from loss. It’s like a black space within you—an emptiness that never goes away. Over time, life adds more colors, but that space remains. And maybe it’s not something that needs to be filled. I’ve learned to accept it as part of who I am.

Even now, I find myself asking: why him? What did my family ever do to deserve this? I never find answers to these questions, but they linger in my mind.

What I can do, and what I try to do, is tell him that I love and miss him. I hope that somehow, across the vastness of the universe, my message reaches him.