Missing Someone Who’s Still Alive: The Quiet Ache of Ambiguous Grief

There is a kind of grief that doesn’t wear black, doesn’t weep openly, and doesn’t always get a name. It sits quietly behind closed doors, in the echo of unsent messages, in the eyes of a parent who no longer recognizes you, in the space between two people who once spoke every day and now share only silence in the ache of missing someone who’s alive. It is the grief of someone still living - what psychologists call ambiguous loss. But long before any textbook defined it, we in India have known this ache in our bones.

You feel it in the home that no longer feels like home, in a sibling who withdrew into a life you can no longer reach, in the memory of a partner who left without an explanation. The loss is not complete, not clean. It lingers... It confuses. It returns. And yet, there are no condolences, no rituals, no names to mark its presence. You might find yourself whispering, “But they’re still alive,” as if that should make it easier. But it doesn’t.

When the person you miss still breathes, grief becomes a kind of suspended animation, a longing that never finds landing. It is a diya left burning in an empty room. A conversation still half-alive inside you. A festival without invitation. You carry this sorrow into your day like a secret prayer, wondering if you’re allowed to mourn someone who hasn’t died.

In our culture, where bonds of family and duty run deep, estrangement can feel like betrayal. A child who sets boundaries is called disrespectful. A woman who walks away from a painful marriage is told she should have stayed. The grief of that distance is often buried beneath layers of guilt, shame, and silence. But silence does not soften sorrow, it merely isolates it.

And so, I invite you to pause here...

To take a breath and let your body speak. That tightness in your chest, that dull ache in your stomach, that heaviness behind your eyes - these are all forms of remembering. Of loving. Of losing. You are not dramatic. You are not weak. You are simply grieving what your soul once held dear.

There may be no funerals for these losses, but they deserve ceremony.

You might begin with a small gesture: lighting a candle, writing a letter you’ll never send, placing a flower beside a photograph. You might sit in silence and whisper to yourself,

“I miss you. I wish things were different. I release what I cannot change.”

Let this be your prayer. Your pause. Your act of quiet devotion to a relationship that mattered.

And if the world doesn’t see this grief, let it not diminish its weight. You do not need permission to mourn. You do not need evidence to feel. The heart remembers in ways the mind cannot explain. And in the remembering, there is healing.

Tara Brach speaks of radical compassion, a willingness to meet our pain without judgment. You might place a hand on your heart and say gently, “Yes, this hurts.” You don’t need to fix it or rush it. Just being with it is an act of courage.

And from Pema Chödrön, we learn that loss - especially the ambiguous kind - is a teacher disguised as emptiness. It asks nothing from you but presence. It does not demand resolution, only your willingness to sit beside it, as you would with an old friend.

Grief, even when invisible, wants to move. Through tears, through breath, through ritual. So let it. Let your sorrow breathe. Let it dance, stumble, retreat, return. You are not broken. You are simply becoming.

One day, maybe not soon, you will feel the edge of that ache soften. The person may still be gone, or unreachable, but the sharpness will blur. In its place, there may be a quiet reverence. A prayer of thanks for what once was. A gentle bow to all that never came to be.

And so, we hold space.... for breakups that offered no closure, for parents who could not love the way we needed, for children who never arrived, for friends who disappeared, for family we had to leave behind. Their absence may be wordless, but it is not weightless.

You are allowed to miss them.

You are allowed to mourn.

You are allowed to name it: grief.

And may this naming become a balm, a beginning, a return to yourself.

With tenderness and presence,

Anjali Mahalke

 Further Reading & References:

• Dr. Pauline Boss – Ambiguous Loss & The Myth of Closure

• Tara Brach – Radical Acceptance

• Pema Chödrön – When Things Fall Apart

• Megha Bajaj – “The Silent Grief of Emotional Estrangement” (Life Positive)

• Dr. Shefali Tsabary – The Conscious Parent (for parent-child grief dynamics)