Pre-Grief

Pre-grief is mourning something that hasn't ended yet. A parent still living. A friendship still standing. The mind is already practicing the loss, as if rehearsal could make the real thing softer. It rarely does. What pre-grief does instead is borrow pain from a future you cannot avoid and spend it in a present that doesn't yet need it. The cost is that you grieve twice. The gift is that you notice what you still have while it is still there. Naming pre-grief is a way of putting down a portion of the weight.