A couple of weeks ago, someone told me,
“Once you’ve lost one parent and dealt with it, you become prepared for the loss of the other. You stop fearing it.”
I was under shock—astonished and surprised. I mentally said, God bless you, ended the conversation, and hung up.
Consciously, I did not remember that thought, but it seems it stayed with me in my subconscious mind.
For the past one week, I noticed myself feeling an undercurrent of fear that I couldn’t quite name—until now.
It’s the fear of losing my father.
Maybe this fear developed during that conversation or perhaps it traces back to my childhood, when my father had a cerebral attack. I don’t know. But what I do know is this:
Losing a parent is not something you get “used to.” Even after one loss, the thought of losing the other can be just as overwhelming—if not more. When one parent is gone, the surviving parent often becomes a living reflection of both, carrying shared memories and silent comforts. That bond makes the idea of further loss even more delicate, not less. This is that relation where the last strings are attached—for both of them.
I’ve also come to realize that when people speak about grief, they often reveal their own coping mechanisms, not universal truths. The person who shared this thought with me is going through a broken relationship and battling their own depression. Maybe distancing themselves from emotional attachments feels safer to them right now. Sometimes people try to minimize future pain as a way to survive current pain.
But grief doesn’t follow a formula. Love cannot be systemized. Each loss reshapes us differently.
Grief is not something to overcome, but something we learn to carry. It doesn’t go away, but it shifts and changes form with time. The love remains—and maybe that’s what helps us keep going.
Maybe the real courage isn’t in preparing for loss—but in allowing ourselves to love fully, despite knowing its impermanence.