I have been grieving my mother for years, even though she is still alive. Sometimes before falling asleep – in that liminal space between waking and sleeping where the self becomes porous – I’d see the image of the sweet and caring woman who would come to say goodnight, her cheeks covered in thick layers of night cream. Then, out of nowhere, the image would flip into the raging woman who was so entangled in her own suffering that she turned her frustration on us. Over the years, that second woman slowly swallowed the first, as she got pulled into my brother’s addiction. It’s hard to say where her own unhappiness ended and my brother’s suffering began, but together they drifted into a parallel reality, cut off from the world beyond their heads. There was no funeral for this. No condolence cards. No flowers. No phone calls. No leave of absence. What was I supposed to mourn?

And yet what I felt for them, what I still feel, has the unmistakable gravity of mourning. Can there be grief without death?…