Losing someone you love is painful enough. Being treated like you didn’t have the right to love them makes the goodbye even harder.

There are some goodbyes you know are coming.

And then there are the ones you don’t even get the chance to say.

Yesterday, I found out that someone I loved dearly had died.

But I didn’t find out from the person I thought would tell me.

I found out from someone else.

His name was Poppop.

He wasn’t my biological father.

There wasn’t a piece of paper somewhere saying I belonged to him.

We didn’t share DNA.

But sometimes family isn’t created through blood.

Sometimes it’s created through love.

And Poppop loved me like a daughter.

In fact, that’s what he called me.

Daughter.

I can still hear it.

I can still see that big smile.

I can still imagine his arms wrapping around me when he hugged me.

There was something about him that felt familiar and safe. He knew my dad. He worked on cars. He loved old Volkswagen Beetles. He drag raced. He wore his overalls, tinkered with things, mowed grass, and carried that wonderful Southern voice and laugh that could make you smile.

He felt like home.

And he welcomed me as though I belonged there.

That mattered to me more than he probably ever realized.

And now he’s gone.

I didn’t get a phone call.

I didn’t get a message.

I wasn’t told by someone I have considered a best friend and sister for decades.

Someone else saw that he had passed and told me.

And now I’m sitting here trying to understand how grief and betrayal can hurt in two completely different places at the same time.

Sometimes You Don’t Just Grieve the Person Who Died

This is something we don’t talk about enough.

Sometimes death doesn’t only reveal how much we loved the person who died.

It reveals things about the people who are still living.

Death can bring families together.

But death can also expose wounds, resentments, divisions and relationships we thought were stronger than they actually were.

And sometimes, while you’re trying to comprehend that someone you love is gone, you’re also trying to understand why someone else decided you didn’t deserve to know.

Why weren’t you called?

Why weren’t you included?

Why weren’t you given the opportunity to say goodbye?

Why did someone else get to decide whether your relationship mattered?

Those questions hurt.

Especially when you’ve lived through something similar before.

Because sometimes today’s grief reaches backward and grabs yesterday’s grief by the hand.

And suddenly you’re mourning more than one person.

You’re mourning everything all over again.

I’ve Been Here Before

When my mom died, grief came tangled with hurt too.

Before she passed, there were things happening with her health that I wasn’t told about.

I had spent years helping care for my mother.

For three years, I was there.

Eventually, I had to return to work. I couldn’t take off every time something happened, and other family members said they would help.

But whenever she was hospitalized and I could get there, I went.

I stayed.

Because she was my momma.

Then I received a call about a week before she died.

I got that week with her.

And today, I’m incredibly thankful I did.

But even after she passed, I didn’t find out until hours later.

Then came decisions about her remains and funeral arrangements.

My mother had expressed what she wanted.

I knew how she felt about cremation.

She had made me promise.

But ultimately, decisions were made that I couldn’t control.

She was cremated.

I wasn’t able to give her the goodbye I believed she wanted.

Later, I put together a Celebration of Life for my mom.

Eight people came.

Eight.

And none of the family members I expected to stand beside me were there.

I remember looking around that room and realizing something that hurt almost as badly as losing my mother:

I felt completely alone.

When Grief Makes You Feel Like the Black Sheep

After my mom died, relationships changed.

People I thought would always be family disappeared.

Aunts.

Uncles.

Cousins.

People connected to memories from my entire childhood.

And then there were my mother’s belongings.

Things disappeared.

Things were sold.

Things were given away.

I wasn’t allowed to have her ashes.

There are a few blankets and knickknacks that I have, and I treasure them.

But there are things I will never get back.

And some people might say:

“They’re only things.”

But when someone dies, sometimes things aren’t just things anymore.

A blanket can still smell like home.

A piece of jewelry can carry an entire childhood.

A handwritten note can suddenly become priceless.

A mother’s ring isn’t simply metal and stones.

It represents a family.

And when you already feel excluded from someone’s goodbye, being excluded from the pieces they left behind can feel like someone is trying to erase your place in their life too.

That hurts.

And Now I’m Standing Here Again

Years later, here I am.

Different person.

Different loss.

Same horrible feeling.

Someone I loved has died.

And once again, I learned about it from somebody else.

Once again, I’m wondering whether I’ll even be included in the goodbye.

Once again, I feel like I’m standing outside looking through a window at people I thought were my family.

And this time, something inside me is tired.

Not angry in the way that wants revenge.

Not interested in destroying anyone.

Just…

tired.

Tired of wondering what I did to deserve being treated as disposable.

Tired of loving people with my whole heart and discovering that the relationship apparently didn’t mean the same thing to them.

Tired of feeling like the black sheep.

Tired of being the one standing outside the circle.

And underneath all that exhaustion is something much simpler.

I’m hurt.

Deeply hurt.

I Loved Them. That Part Was Real.

This is what I’m trying to hold onto tonight.

Other people can change their relationship with me.

They can exclude me.

They can stop calling.

They can decide I’m no longer part of their lives.

They can leave my name off an invitation.

They can even prevent me from being present for a goodbye.

But there is one thing they cannot change:

They cannot rewrite the love I gave.

I loved my mom.

I cared for her.

I showed up.

Was I perfect?

Absolutely not.

There are things I’d probably do differently if life gave me another chance.

But I loved her.

And I know that.

I loved Poppop too.

And I know he loved me.

He called me Daughter.

Nobody can take that word away from me.

Nobody can erase his hugs.

Nobody can erase his laugh.

Nobody can erase the conversations, the memories or the feeling I had when I was around him.

Nobody gets to rewrite a relationship simply because someone has died.

And maybe somebody reading this desperately needs to hear that.

You Don’t Need Permission to Grieve

If you’ve ever been excluded from a funeral…

If nobody called you when someone died…

If family drama prevented you from saying goodbye…

If you were estranged when someone passed…

If someone decided your relationship wasn’t important enough…

If you weren’t mentioned in an obituary…

If you didn’t receive an invitation…

If you weren’t given belongings or photographs…

If everyone else seemed to gather together while you were left grieving alone…

Please hear me.

You do not need anyone’s permission to grieve someone you loved.

A funeral invitation doesn’t determine the importance of your relationship.

Neither does an obituary.

Neither does biology.

Neither does somebody else’s opinion.

Love is what made the relationship real.

And grief is often the receipt love leaves behind.

But Being Left Out Still Hurts

I don’t want to wrap this up with some pretty sentence pretending I’m suddenly okay.

I’m not.

Poppop died yesterday.

This is fresh.

It hurts.

I’ve experienced several losses recently, and my heart feels tired.

I don’t have some beautiful lesson that magically makes betrayal disappear.

Sometimes forgiveness takes time.

Sometimes understanding never comes.

Sometimes healing begins before answers do.

And sometimes the healthiest thing we can say is:

What happened hurt me.

Not because we’re trying to punish anyone.

Not because we’re asking the world to choose sides.

But because pretending something didn’t hurt doesn’t make us healed.

It only makes us quiet.

And I’ve spent enough of my life swallowing pain to make other people comfortable.

To Anyone Who Has Ever Felt Like the Outcast

Maybe your story isn’t exactly like mine.

Maybe you’ve spent years wondering why everyone else seems to belong somewhere and you don’t.

Maybe you’re the black sheep.

Maybe your phone stopped ringing.

Maybe holidays changed.

Maybe the people you thought would grow old beside you became strangers.

Maybe you’ve asked yourself:

Why doesn’t anyone love me the way I love them?

I understand that question more than I wish I did.

But I’m trying not to let other people’s inability or unwillingness to love me well convince me that I’m unlovable.

Those are not the same thing.

And neither are they the same for you.

Sometimes we spend years standing outside a locked door, knocking harder and harder, believing that if we love enough, explain enough, forgive enough or prove ourselves enough, somebody will finally open it.

Maybe healing isn’t about knocking harder.

Maybe it’s about realizing there are other places where the door is already open.

People who want you at their table.

People who don’t make you audition for belonging.

People who don’t use silence as punishment.

People who call.

People who show up.

People who make room.

And sometimes family becomes the people who choose to love us well.

Poppop taught me something about that.

He didn’t have to call me Daughter.

He chose to.

And I’ll carry that with me.

Poppop, This Part Is for You

I don’t know whether I’ll get to stand somewhere and publicly say goodbye to you.

So I’ll say some of it here.

Thank you.

Thank you for your smile.

Thank you for those hugs.

Thank you for your Southern voice and that laugh I loved.

Thank you for making me feel welcome.

Thank you for the conversations, the cars, the tinkering, the overalls, the mowing, the stories and all those wonderfully ordinary things that don’t feel ordinary anymore.

Thank you for knowing my dad and somehow giving me another little connection to home.

Most of all…

Thank you for calling me Daughter.

You didn’t have to love me like one of your own.

But you did.

That takes a special heart.

I may not get the goodbye I wanted.

But nobody can take away the hello you gave me.

Nobody can take away the years in between.

And nobody can take away the love.

Rest peacefully, Poppop.

I hope when you reached Heaven, there were familiar faces waiting at the gate.

And someday, when my time comes…

I’ll find you.

And I’m going to hug your neck again.

Until then, you’ll have a place in my heart.

Always.

One Last Thought Before You Leave the Porch

Grief is hard enough.

Please don’t make people prove that they deserve to mourn.

If somebody loved the person who died, give them compassion.

Make the phone call.

Send the message.

Tell them what happened.

Invite them to say goodbye.

Put family disagreements aside when you can.

Death leaves enough unfinished sentences on its own.

We don’t need to create more of them.

And if you’re the person who wasn’t called…

The person who wasn’t invited…

The person who found out from Facebook or somebody else…

The person sitting alone wondering whether your love mattered…

Come sit beside me for a while.

There’s room for you here on The Porch.

You don’t have to defend your grief.

You don’t have to prove your relationship.

And you don’t have to pretend betrayal doesn’t hurt just because somebody else is grieving too.

We can hold two truths at once:

Someone we loved died.

And the way we were treated afterward hurt us deeply.

Both deserve space.

Both deserve healing.

And neither makes the love we gave any less real.

Tonight, I’m not going to apologize for loving deeply.

I’m going to grieve deeply because I did love deeply.

And tomorrow…

I’ll begin figuring out how to carry that love forward without allowing the people who hurt me to decide what my heart is worth.

Because they don’t get that power.

They never did.

With love,

April
Big Heart Real Life