We might often assume that to write about grief, we must understand it. That we must’ve arrived somewhere wise where pain was transformed into meaning.
I write about grief because I am still inside many versions of it. Because some losses do not conclude. Because certain absences do not become lessons. Because there are emotions that refuse to be summarized, and fiction is sometimes the only place willing to hold them without demanding clarity.
Grief is not always one event
Grief sometimes has the connotation of death. And yes, grief can be born there, but it also lives in other places, not always recognized quickly enough. The end of a relationship. The version of yourself that existed before something happened. The parent you wished for but never had. Friendships that quietly expired. Dreams that no longer fit. Years you cannot get back. Trust that once felt permanent.
Sometimes grief arrives with funerals. Sometimes it arrives with silence. Sometimes it arrives while everyone else insists nothing happened. That kind of grief can be especially lonely. Because when loss is invisible, people rarely know how to witness it.
Fiction lets me approach what real life avoids
Real life can be impatient with pain, but fiction asks different things. It allows a slowness and contradiction. It allows memory to be unreliable, sentimental, cruel, and selective. And, above all, it allows grief to remain unfinished.
Writers revisit themes the way people touch bruises: not always to suffer, sometimes to understand what still hurts.
I should be honest here, writing has helped, but it has not healed everything. This is especially beautiful because some griefs are never meant to be “gotten over”; they’re meant to be imperfectly integrated across the changing seasons of a life.
Not all healing looks like closure.
— Montse
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