On February 26, my world changed forever. My mother—my only parent, my anchor, my home—passed away. Even as I write this, it still doesn’t feel real. How can someone so constant, so woven into the very fabric of my life, suddenly be gone? The weight of this loss is indescribable, yet the first emotion that engulfed me wasn’t sadness. It was shock.

The Numbness of Loss

Grief has stages, they say. And the first is denial. Not in the sense that I refused to believe she was gone—I saw it with my own eyes. But the way I saw it made it even harder to process.

I wasn’t there when she took her last breath. I didn’t get to hold her hand in her final moments. Instead, I saw her lifeless body through a video call. A screen separated me from the devastating reality. I stared, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. She was right there, yet impossibly far away.

When the call ended, my mind struggled to accept it. My body went numb. I moved through the motions—making calls, responding to messages—but inside, I felt frozen. A part of me still expected to hear her voice, to get one more call from her. The silence left in her absence was deafening.

The Unreality of Grief

They don’t tell you that grief doesn’t always arrive as tears. Sometimes, it’s a strange detachment, as if you’re watching someone else’s life fall apart. Maybe because I wasn’t physically there, my heart still held onto the hope that it wasn’t real.

I’ve learned that this is the mind’s way of protecting itself. The loss is too great, too overwhelming, so it wraps you in a fog, allowing you to process little by little.

Leaning Into the Pain

But even in the midst of this numbness, there are moments when the truth pierces through. A familiar scent, a song she loved, the sound of someone’s laughter that reminds me of hers—it all brings sudden waves of pain, crashing in when I least expect it.

I’m learning that grief doesn’t follow a straight path. It ebbs and flows. Some moments, I feel strong. Others, I feel like a lost child, longing for the only parent I ever had. But in this first stage of grief, I’m allowing myself to feel what I feel—whether that’s shock, disbelief, or unbearable sadness.

I don’t know what the coming days will bring. But for now, I take it moment by moment, breath by breath. Because that’s all I can do.

To anyone walking this road of loss, I see you. I feel your pain. And even in the depths of grief, I hope we find small glimpses of light.