I was thousands of miles away from home when I lost my brother.

When the call came, everything around me in Toronto went still. The city didn’t know what had just happened. The world kept moving, and I felt like I had stopped.

Grieving from afar is its own kind of heartbreak. You’re not just dealing with loss — you’re dealing with distance. I couldn’t be there to hold my family. I couldn’t walk into his room one last time. I couldn’t even say goodbye.

I remember walking down the street and thinking, “No one here knows what just shattered inside me.” It made me feel invisible. Isolated.

I had to grieve in a place that didn’t know Darren. That didn’t know me in this new, broken shape.

But slowly, I found small ways to feel connected — lighting a candle, listening to his favorite songs, writing to him. Sometimes just saying his name out loud made me feel closer.

If you’ve lost someone while far from home, please know this: your grief is real. Your connection doesn’t need to be physical to be powerful. And even across oceans, love doesn’t lose its way.

You are not alone in this.