Personal Story — The Fruit Aisle
A few days after Angé died, I went to the grocery store. I saw someone laughing loudly in the fruit aisle, completely absorbed in their day. I stood there, frozen by a single, simple thought: How can life just go on?
The world had collapsed — at least mine had — and yet traffic moved, bread still baked, and people still laughed. I felt anger rise in me, not at them personally, but at the contrast. It was like I was standing in a silent movie while the rest of the world was playing at full volume.
That moment marked the beginning of my journey toward understanding what forgiveness means during mourning. Not just forgiving the person who left. But forgiving the living — for moving on, for not understanding, and for not being shattered like I was.
Introduction
Forgiveness and grief walk closely together, though most people don’t realise it. In everyday life, we think of forgiveness as something we give to others when they’ve wronged us. But in mourning, forgiveness becomes internal, intimate, and tangled.
You might have to forgive the person who died — for leaving you, for suffering, for not saying everything you needed to hear. You might need to forgive yourself — for the words you said or didn’t say, for the things you did or didn’t do, for simply surviving when they did not.
But perhaps the most surprising part of mourning is learning to forgive the world around you — for not stopping, for not noticing, for carrying on as if nothing happened while your life feels like rubble.
You may have to forgive friends for carrying on with their lives, with just the occasional “how are doing”.
Forgiveness in mourning isn’t about excusing pain or pretending it’s fine. It’s about releasing the hold that anger and resentment have over you, so your grief can breathe.
Forgiving the One Who Died
Death often feels unfair, even when it comes after a long illness. When it’s sudden, it can feel downright cruel. You may find yourself angry with the person you lost — angry that they didn’t fight harder, angry that they didn’t say goodbye properly, angry that they left you to navigate life alone.
This kind of anger can feel like betrayal. But it’s part of the human experience of loss. You loved them deeply, so you grieve deeply. And that grief doesn’t always arrive as tears. Sometimes it comes as heat, frustration, or a tightness in the chest.
Forgiveness here doesn’t mean pretending you aren’t hurt or deciding their death was “okay.” It means acknowledging the pain and slowly releasing the resentment so you’re not bound to it. You don’t need to justify their leaving. You just need to make peace with their absence enough that their memory isn’t always framed in anger.
One way to approach this is to imagine the roles reversed. If you had been the one to go first, would you want them to carry anger at you? Or would you want them to keep your memory alive in warmth? That perspective shift can be the first gentle step toward forgiveness.
Forgiving Yourself
Mourning brings with it a ruthless internal critic. You replay your choices. You examine your words. You re-run conversations, often inventing better ones in your head. You wish you’d been stronger, braver, more present.
This self-blame can be relentless. But the truth is, you did what you could with the knowledge, capacity, and emotional energy you had at the time. Self-forgiveness doesn’t mean you stop caring. It means you acknowledge your humanness. It means you treat the version of you who lived through those days with compassion instead of condemnation.
One practical way to do this is to speak to yourself as you would a hurting friend. If someone you loved came to you in the same pain, would you list all their failings? Or would you say, “You did your best. You loved them. That’s enough”?
Forgiving Others for Moving On
One of the hardest realisations in grief is that life goes on for everyone else. Friends return to work. Families pick up school routines. Social media fills with holiday photos, dinner parties, and anniversaries.
Meanwhile, you might still be sitting in the quiet, trying to remember the sound of their voice. That gap between your reality and everyone else’s can feel like a wound.
It’s easy to interpret this as abandonment or a sign that they didn’t care. But often, it’s a sign that they can’t live inside your pain with you — and truthfully, you wouldn’t want them to. Everyone’s survival depends on the ability to keep moving forward.
Forgiveness here is radical. It’s about letting go of the expectation that others will grieve the way you do. It’s about accepting that their return to normal isn’t betrayal — it’s just life continuing, as it always has and always will.
This doesn’t mean you can’t feel left behind. It just means you decide not to let that feeling harden into bitterness.
Forgiving the World for Not Pausing
There’s something deeply disorienting about the world continuing as if nothing happened. The buses still run. Children still laugh in playgrounds. The sun rises, the moon sets, and the seasons change.
And yet, you’re trying to decide why you should get out of bed, which shirt to wear and what to eat. Why is that so hard for the rest of the world to understand how difficult that is
You want the world to stop, even just for a moment, and acknowledge that something sacred is gone. But it doesn’t. The world turns without ceremony.
Forgiving the world means not expecting it to validate your grief. It means you learn to create sacred pauses for yourself — lighting a candle, writing in a journal, sitting quietly, or visiting a place that holds memories. These moments aren’t for the world. They’re for you.
Why Forgiveness Frees the Grieving
Forgiveness doesn’t “fix” grief. It doesn’t shorten the timeline or erase the pain. But it does make grief more liveable.
When you let go of anger — at them, at yourself, at others, at the world — you make space for new emotions to visit. Not necessarily better emotions, just different ones: compassion, reflection, nostalgia without bitterness.
Forgiveness makes the grief breathable. And with breath comes life. Life that still includes your loved one, not just as a loss, but as a legacy.
Conclusion
In mourning, forgiveness is not a single act. It’s a discipline. You may find yourself forgiving the same person a hundred times over. You may need to forgive yourself every morning. You may need to forgive the world every time you see a couple holding hands or hear a song they loved.
That’s okay. Mourning is messy. Forgiveness will not erase grief — but it will make carrying it a little less heavy.
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Reflection Questions and Action Steps
1. Who or what are you struggling to forgive in your mourning?
2. What would forgiving them — or yourself — actually change?
3. How do you react when others move on from your grief?
4. What’s one act of forgiveness you could practice this week?
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Because of Angé — The Quiet Garden Bench
Not long after Angé died, I found myself at a small botanical garden we had once visited together. There was a wooden bench under a jacaranda tree, the kind she loved because of the purple carpet it dropped in spring. I sat down, expecting to feel comfort in the memory. Instead, I felt a rush of anger. She should have been there with me, laughing about how the blossoms stuck to our shoes. She should have been leaning into me, telling me which plant to photograph next.
That afternoon, I realised I had a choice. I could let that anger build a wall between me and her memory — or I could forgive her for not being there, forgive myself for wishing too hard, and forgive the world for continuing to turn without her. So I sat longer. I listened to the leaves rustle. I let the bench become a place of peace rather than pain.
Now, whenever I pass a bench under a flowering tree, I remember that moment. I remember that forgiveness in mourning isn’t about erasing the hurt. It’s about making space for love to keep breathing, even in the places where loss feels loudest.
