Anticipatory Grief: Grieving Someone Who Is Still Here

Grieving someone who is still alive has a name: anticipatory grief. Why it brings guilt and exhaustion, and a way to make room for it while they're here.

Rytis Violeta By Rytis & Violeta
Updated
An older hand resting over a younger hand on a light wooden table beside a pale teal teacup, soft window light.

You are sitting by her bed, or in the chair next to hers by the window, and she is still here. She is asking whether you have eaten. And you are already missing her.

Then the guilt comes. How can I grieve someone who is alive? What kind of daughter does that?

Maybe you cry in the car before you go in, and fix your face in the rear-view mirror. Maybe you can’t cry at all. You are just tired, in a way that no amount of sleep reaches.

This has a name. It is called anticipatory grief, and nothing about it means you love them less. It means you love them, and part of you already knows.

What is anticipatory grief?

It is grief that arrives early. It can come with a diagnosis, with dementia, with a parent getting frailer every month, with a partner whose illness is not going to get better.

And it isn’t only about the death that is coming. You are already losing things now. The way she used to call you on Sundays. The father who fixed everything. The conversations you can no longer have. The future you thought you would share. Each of those is a small loss, and each one is felt in the body.

So the grief is real, even if the funeral isn’t. It just has no ritual, no casseroles on the doorstep, no one saying “I’m sorry for your loss.” You carry it between appointments, quietly, while everyone asks how they are doing.

Grieving someone who is still alive: why does it feel so wrong?

Because the mind has rules. Grief is for after. Before, you are supposed to be hopeful, useful and strong.

So the grief gets pushed down. And here is the thing about feelings that are pushed down: they don’t leave. In our book we describe it like this: “Every feeling you refused to feel is a train waiting outside the station. That is the heaviness you carry. Not your past. Not your parents. Not your bad luck. Unfelt feelings, waiting for a track.”

Anticipatory grief is a lot of trains, arriving at once.

And they arrive mixed: sadness, and right behind it fear, and then anger, at the illness, at the doctors, at your brother who doesn’t visit, sometimes at the person you are losing. And for many people, a thought they would never say out loud: “I wish this was over.” Then a wave of guilt for having thought it.

All of these are allowed. None of them is a verdict on your love. They are sensations in your body, asking for a few minutes of your attention instead of a trial.

What is anticipatory grief for a parent like?

Often, it is grief and irritation in the same afternoon.

There is a passage in our book about mothers that many daughters recognise: “You can be fifty years old and still become a small child the moment you walk into your mother’s kitchen. You clean for her, help her, dress her, and she can still irritate you like nobody else on earth.”

So you feed her, sort her pills, sit through the same story for the fifth time, and you feel tenderness and frustration at once. Then you drive home and cry, and you are not sure which feeling you are crying about.

You don’t need to sort them out. In the body they are all just pressure, heat, a throat that closes. That is enough to work with.

When the time comes, we wrote about what follows in grief after losing my mother. If old hurts with your parent are tangled into this, how to let go of resentment may help. And if you can’t think straight anymore, read grief brain fog. It can start before the loss, too.

How do you grieve now, without falling apart in front of them?

Two ways, one for during the visit and one for after.

During the visit, you don’t need to hide everything or show everything. You can put a part of your attention on the place in your body that just lit up, the tight throat, the heavy chest, and stay with it while you keep holding her hand. Life goes on, and you are with your feeling at the same time. It can be what lets you stay present with them, instead of half-there and holding your breath.

After the visit, give the grief somewhere to go. The car is often the only private room you have. This practice is made for exactly that.

Practice5 min

Five minutes in a parked car

  1. After the visit, before you drive, stay in the parked car. Phone face down.
  2. Close your eyes. Hands on your thighs, palms down.
  3. Leave the breath alone. Don’t breathe deeply. Don’t count.
  4. Now stop moving. No adjusting, no reaching for the keys.
  5. Ask one question: where is it heaviest in my body right now?
  6. Put all of your attention there, and keep it there. You are not trying to change it.
  7. Thoughts will come: the next appointment, the call to the care home. Let them pass like cars on a street, and come back to the place in the body.
  8. Stop whenever you need to. Then open your eyes slowly, feel the seat under you, and wait a moment before you drive.

What you might notice. Some people feel the pressure in the chest get bigger, then move to the throat, and tears come. Some feel only tiredness. Some feel nothing the first time. All of that is fine.

Under anticipatory grief there is often a question with no easy answer. Why them. Why now. How do I live through what is coming. If you are carrying that, The Birth Letter, our project, writes a free personal letter about what is weighing on you most right now. You can ask it exactly that.

What can you do this week?

  1. Say one true thing to them, if you can. Not a speech. “I’m glad I’m here.” “I love sitting with you.” Only what is true for you today.
  2. Give away one task. The shopping, the paperwork, one visit. Let someone else carry one piece.
  3. When the guilt knocks, don’t open the door. Guilt is like a kid at the door selling cookies: “You can hear the knock and not open the door. You can even say through the door, kindly: ‘Not today.’”
  4. Tell one friend. “I’m already grieving, and it’s hard.” Don’t stay alone with it for long. The people who love you are part of the way through.
  5. Keep the five minutes before you drive home. Not every time. When you need it.

If you want to understand the whole method behind the practice, it is on the Feeling Session page. You will find more about loss and the big turns of life in our life events section.

One day you will sit in that chair by the window and she will not be in the next one. That day is not today. Today she is still asking whether you have eaten. Let yourself grieve a little on the way in, and then sit down and answer her.

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