Grief doesn’t just change you. It reshapes everything around you, including your closest relationships. And our marriage was no exception.
Our World Collapsed
When our son Phillip was diagnosed with Menkes disease, a terminal illness with no cure, our world collapsed. In an instant, every dream we had for his life, and for our life as a family vanished. But it wasn’t just my heart that broke. It was ours. My husband and I were both grieving the same child, yet somehow, we felt like we were grieving alone.
I became a full-time caregiver. Every day was filled with medical routines, watching our son lose skills, and sitting in a space of anticipatory grief. Meanwhile, my husband carried a different weight, working long hours because the bills didn’t stop, even though our lives had. He tried to protect us by keeping life running. But that also meant he wasn’t so much at home. And when he was, we were often too exhausted or too emotionally drained to truly connect.
Carrying the Weight Alone
I was the one who stayed strong for our family, trying to hold it all together while caring for Phillip. Every day, I pushed through the pain, even though I was breaking inside. I felt like I had no choice but to keep going, for our son and for my husband. But my husband? He wasn’t coping. He struggled in silence. It wasn’t that he didn’t care or that he didn’t hurt, it was just that he didn’t know how to process his grief. He withdrew, and I could feel the distance between us growing, even though we were both drowning in sorrow.
Grieving in Different Ways
We were two parents in pain, but the pain looked different on each of us. And at times, that difference made me feel even more alone.
One of the hardest parts of grieving in a relationship is that you don’t always do it at the same time or in the same way.
And there’s the thing about grief in marriage: while we were both devastated, we were at very different stages of grieving. I had started therapy to try to cope with the overwhelming sadness, to try and find a way to understand and express all that I was feeling. My therapist was someone outside of our family and friends who could hold space for my pain without judgment. But my husband, on the other hand, didn’t have that outlet. He wasn’t ready to talk about it. He didn’t have a way to express his grief.
I was slowly processing, but for him, every day felt like it was getting harder.
We also had another layer of separation. I’m originally from Colombia; I live in Australia with my family thousands of miles away. Yes, I had my mum here to support me, but even then, I often felt incredibly isolated. There were days when I yearned for the comfort of my own people, the familiarity of home. I wanted my husband to lean on me, to support me, to hold me through the storm, but I also knew he was feeling just as lost as I was. We were both drowning, but sometimes it felt like we were trying to swim in opposite directions.
There were moments when the distance between us was not just emotional, it was geographical, too. He was out there working, providing, keeping our lives together in the way that he could. I was here, trying to care for our son and keep myself afloat. I wanted him to see my pain, to share my grief, but he was too overwhelmed by his own. The loneliness was suffocating at times.
Fighting for Us
Grief is messy, especially when you’re trying to hold on to your relationship through it all. But one thing became clear to me during this time: we both had to fight for each other, even when it felt like we were fighting different battles.
There was no magic solution. No moment where everything clicked into place. But, step by step, we started to reconnect.
We started to see that, even though we were grieving differently, we were still grieving the same thing. And that realization though painful helped us begin to rebuild.
I kept going to therapy. My husband started opening up, little by little. We learned to meet each other where we were in our grief, instead of expecting the other to be exactly where we were.
After Phillip Passed
When Phillip passed away, something shifted in both of us. We realized that the thing we wanted most in the world was simply to be close to each other. We needed to support each other in a way we hadn’t been able to before, because we had both been so consumed by our own grief.
We understood that everyone grieves differently, and that’s okay.
We learned to respect each other’s way of processing pain. Now, when I’m feeling low, my husband is there for me, holding me, offering quiet strength. And when he feels down, I step in to support him, offering the love and comfort he needs. We’ve learned to navigate this grief together, finding ways to help each other heal.
Love Remains
Yes, it’s still hard. Yes, there are days when the weight of it all feels too much to bear. But the love we share? It never left. And little by little, we’ve found a way back to each other, to support each other through this heartache, and to keep going forward together.