When Love Stays: Living with the Absence of Those We Miss

Some mornings I still reach for my phone on Sundays, almost instinctively. There’s a quiet moment of pause where my body remembers before my mind does—that my mom isn’t on the other end of the line anymore.

Grief has taught me that love doesn’t disappear when someone dies. It transforms. It stretches and settles in unexpected places: in a memory that brings a sudden smile, in a song that carries their voice, in the way we whisper their name when no one’s listening.

In these months and years walking beside grief, I’ve come to understand that absence isn’t the opposite of presence—it’s another shape of it. My mom is no longer here, but she’s in so many places. In the way I tie my hair, in the recipe I instinctively recreate, in the way I hold space for someone who’s hurting. Her love didn’t leave. It changed form.

The same is true for so many of us. We keep living, not by “moving on,” but by carrying forward. We carry their laughter. Their phrases. Their teachings and their quiet strength. Grief isn’t about forgetting—it’s about learning how to hold that absence tenderly, gently, as part of who we now are.

With Pachamama, I’ve seen time and again how people honor that love. In the letters they write to those they’ve lost. In the ceremonies they create, full of beauty and meaning. In the ways they say goodbye—not to let go, but to keep holding on differently.

Sometimes, the greatest love story isn’t the one we lived together. It’s the one we keep writing in their honor, every day.

So if today feels heavy, if the absence feels loud, I hope you can sit with it softly. Maybe even say their name out loud. Because what we love deeply doesn’t end. It echoes. It roots. It stays.

With you,
Virginia