Grief in the Closet

When I was fifteen, my friend died. He was someone I deeply cared about; maybe even someone I loved. But I never got the chance to tell him. I never got to come out to him. Never got to say what I needed to say. And when he passed, I didn’t just lose him; I lost a piece of myself too.

Grieving him wasn’t simple. It wasn’t visible. I grieved him quietly. Secretly. In the closet. I couldn’t mourn him fully, at least not in a way that made sense to anyone else around me. No one knew the truth, and even if they did, I don’t think they would’ve understood it. And it broke me. The sadness became unbearable. I lost myself in it. I became depressed. Suicidal. I disappeared inside my own skin, because there was nowhere safe enough for my grief or my love to live. Looking back now, I understand something I didn’t have the words for then: grief in the closet is a grief that’s both heavy and invisible. It’s the grief of not only losing someone but also losing the possibility of ever being honest about how much they meant to you. I never got to tell him I loved him. And for a long time, I didn’t even let myself say that in my own head.

But even now, all these years later, as I am in my 30s now, I find myself feeling closer to him. I used to think that was strange. But I’ve come to learn that what I’m feeling, this connection I still carry, isn’t just about memory. It’s about how grief, love, and identity intertwine, especially when things were left unsaid. When someone dies before we’ve had the chance to fully share our truth, especially truths as vulnerable as love or queerness, it creates a space inside us where longing and imagination live. In that space, we start having the conversations we never got to have. We replay memories. We have dreams of them. We speak to them in silence or in prayer. And in those quiet moments after he died, I found myself creating something sacred, a kind of spiritual intimacy that felt deeper than anything we’d ever had when he was alive. It almost felt forbidden. Back then, our queer love already seemed impossible, unspoken, invisible, tucked away where no one could see. And after his death, that impossibility took on a different shape. Because just as the world had no place for our love while we both were alive, young, and in the closet, there was no place for it after his death, not between the living and the dead. Not between a queer Hmong boy and a queer spirit.

I was only 15. That’s such a fragile, formative age. To lose someone I loved, while still hiding who I was, created a deep fracture in me, a split between the version of me that was allowed to grieve, and the version that had to stay hidden. And as I’ve grown older, I’m slowly allowing myself to revisit that moment, but with more honesty. More compassion. And more truth.

I think I feel closer to him now because I’m finally giving myself permission to grieve him as my whole self, queer, spiritual, wounded, and still healing. And maybe that’s what grief becomes when you no longer have to hide: it becomes a return to love. To the version of you that didn’t get to speak. To the relationship that never got to be fully seen. There’s also something spiritual about it. For many of us who carry ancestral practices and connections to the unseen, we know that death isn’t an ending, it’s a transformation. And sometimes, those we’ve lost find ways to stay with us. Maybe in our dreams. In our quiet moments. Or in the ways we learn to show up for others. Maybe he’s still here. Not in body, but in the way I’ve learned to hold others gently. In the way I love fiercely. In the silence that surrounds every “what if.” Maybe he’s been part of the lineage guiding me, not just through grief, but into becoming who I was always meant to be.

If you’ve ever lost someone you never got to come out to, someone you loved in secret, someone you’re still grieving even now, please know that your pain is real. Your story matters. And your grief deserves to be witnessed, even if the world never saw it before.

This post isn’t about closure. There’s no such thing when a goodbye was never honest. This post is about reclaiming space. For queer grief. For love that never got to be named. For healing that doesn’t follow a timeline. You don’t need the perfect words to begin grieving.

You just need a space where your truth is safe. This is mine. And if you’re still carrying a silent grief of your own, I hope you know—you’re not alone. You never were.

TFL Hmong Shaman