There is a kind of grief that doesn’t get a funeral. No casseroles, no flowers, no cards saying how sorry people are for your loss, because the person you’re grieving is still sitting right beside you.
I know this grief personally. My mother-in-love has dementia, and I call her that on purpose, mother-in-love, because that is exactly what she has been to me. For years she has been one of my greatest gifts. And now I watch something I never expected to watch: the slow, quiet fading of a woman I thought I would have, whole and sharp and stubborn, for many more years.
Her memory is changing. Some days are gentle. Some days she doesn’t remember things I know she would never have forgotten, appointments, conversations, the names of people she has loved for decades. And lately, helping her with everyday things, bathing, dressing, the small tender tasks of keeping a body cared for, has become a battle I never wanted to fight. Not because she doesn’t need the help, but because to her, my helping feels like an intrusion. She has spent a lifetime being independent. She raised children. She made decisions for herself and for everyone around her. So when I step into her bathroom, or try to help her into clean clothes, I am not just a helper in her eyes. I am a stranger walking into the most private rooms of a life she has always managed on her own.
Sometimes she looks at me like I have embarrassed her. Sometimes she looks at me like I am a threat. And I understand that, I truly do. Imagine being ninety years old, and someone half your age insisting on helping you wash, someone deciding for you what you will wear, when you will bathe, whether you can be trusted to remember. She is not being difficult. She is protecting the last pieces of a self that used to be entirely her own.
But here is what nobody warns you about. While she is protecting her independence, I am grieving it.
I grieve the woman who used to call me on Sunday afternoons just to talk. I grieve her quick wit, her opinions, the way she could end a debate with one well-placed sentence. I grieve the relationship we used to have, the one where I was the one being looked after, being advised, being loved in that particular way only she could love me. She is still here. She still lights up when she sees me, most days. But so much of what I remember about her is changing, and I find myself mourning pieces of her while she is still alive enough to hold my hand.
This is the grief of caregiving, and I want to say something plainly, because too many caregivers carry this in silence: you are allowed to grieve someone who is still living. You are not being disloyal. You are not wishing them gone. You are loving someone deeply, and grieving deeply, at the very same time, and both of those feelings can be true in the same heart without canceling each other out.
The grief of caregiving has so many layers. There is the grief of watching independence disappear, one small surrender at a time. There is the grief of roles reversing, the one who always made the decisions now needing decisions made for her, and the strange ache of becoming a parent to someone who once parented everyone. There is the grief of loving someone who may not understand why you’re trying so hard to help, who may even push you away on the very days you give the most. And underneath all of it, there is the quiet, exhausting grief of knowing that tomorrow will likely ask more of you than today did.
If you are living this, I want you to hear me: your tears are not a betrayal. Your weariness is not a failure of love. There is grief in caregiving, and it deserves to be acknowledged, supported, and held, just like any other grief. You do not have to wait until after a funeral to say out loud, “I am losing something, and it hurts.”
I lean on my faith in this season, and it holds me up in the moments when I have nothing left. I believe God sees the caregiver, too. He sees you helping with the bath while your heart breaks. He sees you swallowing the sharp reply when you’re accused of things you did not do. He sees you driving home in silence after a hard visit, and He collects every one of those tears like the precious things they are. You are not invisible. The love you are giving, with no guarantee it will even be understood or remembered, is one of the most sacred kinds of love there is.
So what do we do, we who are grieving someone still sitting beside us?
We keep showing up, and we let ourselves feel. We speak her name and tell her stories, even when she can’t tell them back. We find people who will let us say the hard, honest things without judging us. We grieve on purpose, gently, so the grief doesn’t leak out as resentment or exhaustion. And we hold on to this truth: the woman I love is still here. There are still good days. There is still laughter at the kitchen table. There is still a hand to hold, even on the days she doesn’t know why I’m holding it.
She is still here. And while she is here, I will love her in whatever way she can receive it, and I will let myself grieve in whatever way I need to. Love and grief, walking together, one on each side, every single day.
If this is your story too, I am holding you in my heart. Your grief is real. Your love is real. And you do not have to carry either one alone. 💜
With love,
Rev. Lina Lassiter
Certified Advanced Grief Recovery Specialist
Forever Healed
