The sound of grief

When I met my husband Miles at uni, he was studying music and I was studying engineering. He promised me then that one day he’d compose a song just for me.

It took twenty years, but he kept that promise. And when the song finally arrived, it wasn’t the romantic ballad he once imagined. It was something far more powerful: a song that gives voice to grief.

I’ve always found the silence of grief unsettling. We are told to keep it tidy, to hold it in. We say “I’m fine” when the truth is that inside, we are breaking apart. We minimise our pain so others don’t feel uncomfortable. We silence ourselves - and in doing so, we diminish ourselves.

This song pushes back against that silence. It traces the shape of grief itself:

• the discordant, chaotic climb of early grief,

• the unbearable breaking point when the weight feels impossible to carry,

• and then the slow, softer descent, not the same as before, but gentler, touched with the first threads of healing.

It’s more than music - it’s a tribute to what grief feels like.

And it’s also an invitation. This piece sets the tone for my sound of grief rituals: spaces where we listen, and then dare to make sound ourselves. To shout, wail, whisper, sing. To give grief a voice. To be raw, vulnerable, and finally heard.

Because grief does not need to stay silent.