A Quiet Kind of Grief

this morning, I came across a post from a colleague. She wrote about losing her baby.

I sat there for a while, reading every word. My heart broke for her. I can’t imagine the weight of carrying a life, only to have to say goodbye before ever getting the chance to know them.

And then, almost immediately, I felt sad for myself too.

It felt strange admitting that. Almost unfair.

Because how do you grieve for something you’ve never had?

I’ve never seen two lines on a pregnancy test. I’ve never heard a heartbeat through an ultrasound. I’ve never had a miscarriage. There isn’t a date on the calendar that marks a loss, because there was never a beginning to lose.

Yet somehow, there is still grief.

Not the grief of losing a child, because I know those are two different kinds of pain. I would never pretend they are the same.

This grief is quieter.

It lives in the months that begin with hope and end with another period. In the questions people ask without thinking. In the way I catch myself wondering what our child would have looked like whenever I see my husband laughing. In every birthday and anniversary that quietly reminds me that time keeps moving, even when a dream feels like it’s standing still.

This year, my husband and I are on our way to six years of marriage.

Six years isn’t a measure of how much we love each other. If anything, we’ve learned to love each other in ways we never expected. We’ve learned that marriage isn’t only about celebrating what comes easily. Sometimes it’s about learning how to carry what never arrives.

People often imagine waiting as something active…counting days, making plans, crossing off milestones.

But this kind of waiting is mostly invisible.

You still go to work. You answer emails. You laugh with friends over coffee. You celebrate other people’s babies because you genuinely are happy for them. And somehow, in the quiet moments between ordinary days, you carry a question that has no timeline.

Maybe that’s why my colleague’s words stayed with me.

Her grief had a name.

Mine is harder to explain.

But perhaps both were born from the same place: love. One from loving someone she had to let go of. The other from loving someone I haven’t had the chance to meet.

I don’t know if that someone will ever exist outside my imagination.

I only know that, somehow, I’ve been loving them for a long time.