Why is grieving the loss of a parent just so hard? The answer is the three ghosts of grief.

Throughout my adult years I’ve felt like life is an elaborate board game, complete with dozens of tiny, intricate pieces. The electric bill, house payment, and car insurance. This game requires deep thinking and strategy. Beginning a relationship or letting one go. Searching for a job. This game requires stamina and endurance. The long nights awake with a sick child. Sitting down for yet another tea party with little plastic cups while a work deadline is looming. This is the game. The swirling busyness of life.

When my mother died three years ago, it felt as if someone had run up, placed both hands beneath my heavily laden game board, and flipped the whole thing over, scattering pieces into the air and all over the floor. I didn’t know how to resume. I couldn’t just fix my game and start again.

Grieving my mother’s death completely stopped me. I often felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was the game piece, frozen on the floor, occasionally catching glimpses of life as it continued on away from me and without me.

When I was deep in my raw grief, someone who cared tried to tell me that I was grieving so much because of how much I loved my mom. That my grief was so great because it was equal to my love. And there is some truth in that. Often I would remind myself as I was sobbing that what I was feeling was love. Love and grief together.

A few years went by, and I continued to grieve and to look more closely at my grief. We are old friends, my grief and I. We spend each day together. Grief has a seat at my kitchen table. Grief rides with me in the car. Grief keeps a hand on my shoulder and has taught me a few things along the way.

In Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three spirits–The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come.

Like this story, I have been visited not simply by grief, but by the three ghosts of grief–the ghost of grief’s past, the ghost of grief’s present, and the ghost of grief yet to come.

My grief is not simply a reflection of the volume or weight of my love for my mother. It is not mathematical. I did not accumulate a certain amount of love in the time she was alive, which ceased to grow at the time of her death. Your love for your parent is not a checking account which stopped accepting deposits at the time that they passed away. The love continues. It remains. It grows.

The Ghost of Grief’s Past.

When your parent dies, you grieve their past. Your past. The memories you had and made together. You regret things you said or didn’t say. You remember that one special gift or that birthday party. You can still see what their face looked like when they laughed or remember what their hug felt like.

The Ghost of Grief’s Present.

When your parent dies, you grieve the present. It can be so hard to put one foot forward into life without them. You must continue to live, and they are missing it. There is additional grief and pain when you keep realizing, over and over, that you can’t simply pick up the phone to call them or text them. You might go into their house and expect them to come in the door right behind you. The loss of their presence in your life hangs like a tangible, heavy fog around you.

I think people who haven’t lost someone significant yet tend to think of grief simply as grieving the present. The raw grief phase. The grief that is easy to see from the outside at a funeral. As if the grief process is something you move through and complete. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Ghost of Grief Yet To Come.

When your parent dies, you grieve for the future. You grieve for the time your parent won’t get. You grieve for their lost future. You grieve that they will not see your child be born or learn to drive or go to college. You grieve every major holiday in advance, knowing you will feel a gaping hole of emptiness without them. You will grieve as you age and try to navigate this life on your own, looking ahead and knowing that they are not nearby to supply their wisdom or give their love the way you will need and want them to.

In this way grief is not just the love that we built up and grew with our parent while we had our time together. You are also grieving all the love from the future, through the rest of your life with your parent. The life that might have been.

I didn’t realize that grief was quite so powerful. It is so much more massive than I thought. But that also means I have so much more love, too. And hopefully, like Ebenezer Scrooge, these three ghosts will heal my heart in the end. That, grieving friend, is yet to come.