Before the Goodbye: 100 Prompts For Grieving Someone Who's Still Here

They are still here. Still in the chair. Still asking you the same question they asked eleven minutes ago. And you are already grieving them. Nobody sent a card for this one. You have cried in the parking lot with the engine off. You have googled it at midnight. You have said "fine" to someone at work because the true answer takes the whole afternoon. You have had a thought you have never said out loud. Wanting it over. Feeling nothing. Wanting your own life back. This is not another grief book with soft watercolors and quiet platitudes. No five stages. No timeline. No "treasure every moment" while you are living through the worst of it. No "get therapy" from someone who has not priced the waiting list. It is not here to fix your grief. It cannot. Nobody can. What it does instead is ask you the questions nobody else is asking, then get out of the way so you can answer. This book is for you if: - You are caring for someone with dementia, Alzheimer's, or a terminal diagnosis, and grieving them while they are still alive.- You have never said the ugliest thought out loud to a single person.- You are tired in a way sleep does not fix. Inside these pages: 100 prompts across six sections: the moment you found the word for this, the losses that arrive one at a time with no funeral, the things you cannot say out loud, who you are becoming, the people who do not understand, and what you get to keep. Plus a page for the days you cannot manage a whole page, a note for three in the morning, and the sentence to borrow when someone asks how you are. How to use it: Open it anywhere. Answer one question. Write a word, or fill the page, or write nothing and just read it on the way to bed. Spill coffee on it. It is paper. It can take it. You are allowed to grieve someone who is still here. You always were. Nobody told you.