The Weight of Unseen Grief

Grief is supposed to unite, to soften hearts, to remind us of the love we once shared with the one who is gone. But since Victor’s passing, I have found myself not embraced, but rejected. Instead of compassion, I am met with coldness. Instead of understanding, I am met with hostility.

I struggle to understand what wrong I have committed that justifies such treatment from Victor’s siblings. My actions since his death have been guided by one purpose alone: to preserve his memories and personal space for our son, Kenzo, so that he may grow up with tangible reminders of his father’s life and love.

I have never demanded the return of belongings taken from Victor’s house. I have not sought financial gain, nor have I interfered in inheritance or property. My single and repeated request has been simple and human: access to photographs of Victor and Kenzo together. These are not possessions of wealth, but fragments of memory - irreplaceable keepsakes that belong to our son as much as to anyone else.

Yet instead of empathy, I have been dismissed. Pauline has spoken to me as if my grief were lesser, invalid compared to hers. Michael has gone further - slandering me in public, defaming me in private, and weaponising my past against me. Their actions sting not only for the cruelty they carry, but because they dishonour Victor’s memory in the process.

For twenty years, I built a life with Victor. Through the storms, through the joys, through the ordinary days that shape a family, I was there. I stood independently, never leaning on his siblings, never burdening them. Whatever faults existed between Victor and me, they do not erase the truth of those years. They do not diminish the reality that together we brought Kenzo into this world - the most precious legacy Victor leaves behind.

And yet, I am treated as though my role was nothing. As though two decades of devotion can be erased. As though my grief is invisible, unwanted, or undeserving of respect.

But I know better. The end of my marriage to Victor did not sever my bond to him, nor did it strip the meaning from our shared history. My grief is real. My mourning is valid. And my purpose remains clear: to raise Kenzo with love, to preserve his father’s memory with dignity, and to ensure Victor’s legacy is honoured in a way that his son can carry for the rest of his life.

If I am met with hatred, so be it. Hatred does not define me. What defines me is the love I carry still - for Victor, for the life we built, and most of all, for the son who embodies the best of us both.

“Amid judgment and bitterness, I hold fast to what matters most: preserving Victor’s love for Kenzo”