I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Three people in my life died before I had the chance to say goodbye. No matter how hard I try, I can’t shake this feeling… sometimes it feels even heavier than the grief itself.

I’m thankful that they knew my love for them was real, and I do truly believe they took that with them, but when you don’t get a chance to say goodbye, it makes it harder to move through your grief… at least that’s how it feels for me.

These are losses that feel heavier because the chance to say goodbye was never given. For those who didn’t make it in time, or were kept away by circumstances like Covid, the absence of a final farewell lingers like unfinished sentences. It is a silence that feels loud. It is a door that closed before we could step through.

Goodbyes, when spoken, can soften the sharp edges of grief. They don’t erase the pain, but they give us a moment of closure, a chance to honor the ending. Without them, the heart struggles to reconcile what feels incomplete. The truth is, unsaid goodbyes leave us carrying a weight that is both invisible and unbearable. And yet, within that ache lives the love that was never in question, the love that did not need goodbye to be real.

Not being able to say goodbye does not erase the life shared or the love felt. In time, the heart learns to carry both the sorrow and the memory with quiet grace.

I didn’t get to say goodbye, that too was taken from me.

xo

Gabby