By Meghan Fitzpatrick, Hospice & Palliative Care Representative
Old Colony Hospice & Palliative Care
Recently, a friend sent me an article about something called vicarious grief. The phrase was new to me, but the experience was not. It refers to the sorrow we feel when we witness someone else’s loss or suffering. It is a quieter kind of grief, and it does not get talked about very much.
Most of us expect to grieve when we lose someone we love. We know, at least in theory, that heartbreak is part of the bargain we make when we let people matter to us. It is a terrible feeling, but we expect it. This may just be me talking, but vicarious grief is very often unexpected.
I have worked in close proximity to loss for most of my adult life, so I have seen a lot of grief. It comes in many shapes and sizes. I have grieved in a lot of different ways myself. Being a good caregiver breaks your heart sometimes. I have also held space for family members, friends, and professional caregivers as they have grieved a loved one, so I am no stranger to vicarious grief.
It is natural to feel heartbroken holding the hand of a husband saying goodbye to his wife for the last time, or sitting with a son who has just lost his father. It can be devastating to be the friend beside someone whose world has just changed forever, wishing desperately that there were something you could do to make it better.
In those moments, I often catch myself trying to keep a stiff upper lip. We want to be strong in support of the people we love when they are hurting. We may even find ourselves apologizing for our own emotions, thinking we do not have the right to be as upset as we are. Grief does not follow those kinds of rules.
When we love someone, their pain inevitably reaches us. It echoes through the relationship we share with them. Watching someone you care about suffer can feel almost as unbearable as the loss itself. There is a particular helplessness in witnessing grief. When we lose someone ourselves, there are rituals and expectations that help guide us through it. People bring food. They send cards. They acknowledge the loss.
When the grief belongs primarily to someone else, it can feel harder to claim. The sorrow sits in an uncertain place, somewhere between empathy and heartbreak. People often try to minimize it. They tell themselves they should be the strong one, the supportive one, the steady presence in the room.
The truth is that feeling grief for someone you love is not a failure of strength. It is evidence of connection.
Grief, like joy, is meant to be shared. Truly loving someone means hurting when they hurt. It is proof of our shared human experience.
In hospice, we often use the term compassionate presence. It means showing up for someone’s suffering without trying to fix it or rush it along. It means sitting beside them in the reality they are living, even when it is uncomfortable or painful for us. Compassionate presence is not a sterile experience. It asks something of us emotionally. It asks us to open the door to someone else’s pain, knowing it may linger in our own hearts for a while.
That is not weakness. That is compassion doing exactly what it was designed to do.
If you have ever felt grief on behalf of someone you love, you are not imagining it. You are not being overly sensitive. You are simply responding to the deep human truth that none of us moves through loss entirely alone. Our lives overlap too much for that. Vicarious grief is real. Give yourself space to feel it and credit for standing with someone else in their pain.
About the Author: Meghan Fitzpatrick is a business development representatives at Old Colony Hospice & Palliative Care. She has a strong background in assisted living and dementia care. She is also a trained support group facilitator for the Alzheimer’s Association. Her compassion and knowledge make her a vital part of Old Colony Hospice’s outreach efforts. She is a trusted resource in the community, connecting with families, providers, and community partners throughout the region and can be reached at mfitzpatrick@oldcolonyhospice.com.
