Prologue: Mourning is the Price of Love
Grief is never generic.
We don’t mourn in some universal pattern, measured by how many days we wear black or how many tears we shed. We mourn according to the shape of the hole left behind — and that shape depends entirely on who we have lost. Losing a parent in their 80s is not the same as losing a child at five and is not the same as loosing your partner. Every loss alters the rhythm of your entire life.
It changes how you wake up, how you fall asleep, how you cook, how you plan, and how you speak. It even changes how you introduce yourself to strangers.
People often ask, “How long will this take?” The correct answer is forever. Grief doesn’t follow a clock or a calendar. Mourning is a messy, non-linear, deeply personal journey. Sometimes it feels like drowning. Other times it’s numbness. Then guilt. Then laughter. Then silence. Then back to the beginning. Mourning is not a staircase — it’s a labyrinth.
This book is not a list of steps to recovery. It’s not a neat set of answers. It’s a conversation — a witness — a hand held out to say, you are not alone. Whether you’ve lost a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a child, or a parent… whether your grief is fresh or decades old… whether you are walking, crawling, raging, numbing, or pausing to breathe… this book is for you.
It offers reflections, stories, practices, and reminders. Some pages will bring comfort. Some will challenge you. Some may make you cry. Others may help you laugh again — without guilt. But every chapter has one purpose: to honour your grief, and to honour the one you’ve lost, by helping you carry their memory forward into your life that still has meaning.
Because there is life after death for you.
A Pact Not to Let Grief Destroy Us
Angé once said to me — and she lived this to the end — “Never burn a bridge if you can help it.” Even when a relationship seems broken, or someone has hurt you, try not to destroy the connection completely. You never know when love might return in some other form. You never know when you might need someone. And you never know how someone else might need you.
That applies to grief too. Sometimes, we unintentionally burn our own bridges when we’re in pain. We push people away. We isolate. We say or do things we wouldn’t normally say or do. And sometimes grief makes us destroy the very memory of the one we loved — because remembering hurts too much.
So let this prologue carry a second purpose: a pact.
A quiet, personal promise between you and me. Between all of us who mourn.
Let us agree — grief will not destroy what we had. It will not destroy the memory. It will not destroy the good. It will not destroy our future. Yes, it will scar us. Yes, it will reshape our lives. But it will not take everything. We won’t let it.
If you’re reading this, you are still here. Still standing. Still capable of remodelling your life . And if that remodelling sometimes looks like sadness, or anger, or starting again — that’s okay.
Let this book be one companion on the road to remodelling your life.
