The Goodbye I Never Gave Her

I didn’t go to her funeral.

Not because I didn’t care—but because I didn’t know how to exist in a room full of strangers who were once family. Too many faces I no longer recognized. Too many stories I was no longer part of. Time, silence, and separation had done their job well.

I stayed home, far from the mourning crowd. I didn’t stand at her grave. I didn’t hear the prayers. I didn’t smell the flowers they laid gently over her resting place.

But I cried.

Not loud, not publicly.

Quietly.

Unexpectedly.

And not for the memories—though a few still flicker in my mind like old film reels. I remember her stirring pots in the kitchen, her hands always moving, always feeding, always doing. I remember the softness of her lap as I drifted off to sleep. But those memories are faint now, faded with time and distance.

I didn’t cry for the woman I once knew, not exactly. I cried for the woman I didn’t get to know.

I cried because, even though I barely knew her as an adult, she was the beginning of everything.

Biologically, ancestrally—she was the first in a chain of women who made me possible.

When my mother was still forming inside her womb, her eggs were forming too. Which means that my grandmother carried not just my mother, but the potential for me and my sister as well.

Three generations.

Nested together in one woman.

Unknowingly. Quietly. Without ceremony.

She carried us all. Not metaphorically—but literally. Her womb was the first home we ever had, even before we were ourselves.

And that thought undid me.

She didn’t just exist in the past. She lived on, invisibly, in my present. In the way my daughter looks at me. In the way my hands move when I’m cooking. In the quiet hum of womanhood passed down through blood, bone, and body.

Grief found me slowly. It didn’t roar. It didn’t rage.

It whispered.

It came in the spaces between what was and what could’ve been.

It came not from the sharp pain of recent loss, but from the ache of estrangement. From the knowledge that we had drifted apart long before her final breath.

My mother had her reasons. She closed doors I wasn’t allowed to reopen. And I, being young, followed her lead. I accepted the silence like it was law. I didn’t push. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t fight to keep that bond alive.

And so, my grandmother became a story half-told. A presence that faded long before death came calling.

But now, in this quiet moment of reflection, I feel her again.

I feel her in my motherhood.

In my late-night worries.

In the way I kiss my daughter’s forehead and wrap her tiny hands in mine.

In the strength I didn’t know I inherited.

She is here.

In the lineage.

In the legacy.

In the lives she never got to fully witness, but helped make possible.

So no—I didn’t go to her funeral.

I didn’t owe anyone my presence there. Grief isn’t performance. It doesn’t always show up dressed in black. Sometimes, it arrives years later, in the form of a poem, a quiet apology, a whispered thank you.

This is the poem I owe her.

This is the thread I pull, weaving her back into the fabric of my story.

This is the light I shine into the corners where silence lived too long.

And this is how I say goodbye.

Not with flowers.

Not with eulogies.

But with honesty.

With tenderness.

With the recognition that even if we were strangers at the end, she was the beginning.

The first womb.

The first heartbeat.

The first whisper of all that I would become.

She never asked for recognition. But she deserves it now.

So I write.

For her.

For myself.

For every woman who carries generations in her body without applause or acknowledgment.

This is the goodbye I never gave her.

And this is the thank you I didn’t know I needed to say—until now.

Author’s Note:

This piece was inspired by a journaling prompt that asked, “What has grief taught you?” While I initially thought I’d write about my father, my grandmother’s memory quietly took hold of the pen. She became the grief I didn’t know I was still holding. I share this in honor of all the women who held life before life ever knew it existed.

If this piece moved you, please consider leaving a heart, sharing it with someone navigating grief, or leaving a tip to support my continued writing on memory, motherhood, and healing.