Samantha G.
Photography by John Tropeano
If you’re reading this, don't rush the pieces back together
Losing a parent is inevitable, but no one prepares you for when it actually happens at twenty‑one. Or when it happens suddenly, by suicide.
Grief alone is vast, but losing someone this way unearths an entirely different layer of hopelessness, guilt, and anger. The familiar questions loop endlessly: Could I have done more? What didn’t I see? I had spent the day before with him, spending time doing our favorite thing – watching the Eagles game. I wouldn’t have suspected a thing, especially considering that we had made dinner plans for the following week. The contrast between the future I assumed we had and the reality that followed was jarring.
I felt anger too. Anger at the devastation left behind, at a world that suddenly seemed unfair. Loss invites questions that have no answers: Why did this happen? Why now? But the unanswered questions aren’t the hardest part. The hardest part is picking up the pieces.
Identifying him, giving the eulogy, and sorting through his belongings unearthed deeper levels of hurt. By the end, I was numb.
Standing at the podium at the funeral felt surreal. I didn’t feel anything. I looked out at the crowd gathered to celebrate my Dad and saw faces overcome with grief. In the front row sat my siblings, wearing the same numbness I felt settling into my own face. Afterward, people asked how I didn’t cry while speaking, how I stayed composed. I didn’t have an answer. I had cried all my tears out in the first two days. After that, my sadness dulled into something quieter, heavier.
As I begin to put the pieces back together, I see how grief has changed me.
Sometimes it’s hard to feel sympathy for others. I’m more guarded now. It’s difficult to look a friend in the face and comfort them over problems that feel small compared to this kind of loss. I know pain isn’t a competition, but grief distorts perspective. It reshapes what feels urgent, what feels survivable.
Time doesn’t stop for everyone else. Beyond a brief “I’m so sorry for your loss,” life moves on. No one prepares you for the discomfort of explaining that someone died by suicide or the pitiful look they give you after. It becomes easier to keep the details close.
I can’t sit in my living room the way I used to. My eyes always find the badly patched hole in the wall, repaired, but never fully erased. It’s a reminder that grief doesn’t disappear; it settles into the spaces you once felt safe.
Learning how to live when someone you love is gone is its own impossible task. Everything feels heavier, requiring more energy than you have to give. Speaking at the service and handling the aftermath each took another piece of me. And still, you’re expected to live normally again.
How do you keep moving when the weight of never seeing your Dad again has settled on your chest?
The hardest part is finding normal when nothing about grief feels normal, figuring out how to keep going when everyone else has already moved on. At some point, the check‑ins fade, the condolence cards stop arriving, and you’re left alone with the what-ifs. Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. It comes in waves, unexpectedly, pulling you backward just when you think you’ve found your footing.
In the months that followed, I learned that grief is a constant companion—quiet some days, overwhelming on others. It shows up in conversations, in memories, in the way people look at you when they learn what you’ve lost. Knowing I will never see my Dad again in this lifetime is a weight that will stay with me.
Grief molds you into someone new. I don’t know exactly who that person will be yet, but my hope is that one day I can look back on this pain and be proud—not of what happened, but of how I learned to carry it.
Samantha G., Villanova University
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