Why I Still Wonder If My Daughter Is Okay

My daughter died at 22.

I still wonder if she’s okay.

Which makes no sense.

Because clearly, she isn’t.

At least, that is what the rational part of my mind tells me. Liana died. I know what happened. I know she is no longer living the life she should have had. There is no new home, no ordinary Tuesday, no future unfolding somewhere beyond my sight.

And yet the question still comes.

Is she okay?

It arrives without warning. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes with an urgency that catches me completely off guard.

It is the same question a mother asks when her child leaves home, travels somewhere unfamiliar or simply goes quiet for longer than expected.

Have you arrived safely?

Did you remember your coat?

Are you eating properly?

Are you okay?

Motherhood trains us to ask these questions. From the moment our children enter the world, part of us is always listening for them. Watching. Checking. Trying to keep them safe.

Death may end a life, but it does not know how to switch that instinct off.

I didn’t stop being Liana’s mum when she died. My love did not receive the news and quietly stand down. Every part of me continued to recognise her as my child—the person I was supposed to protect, comfort and find when she needed me.

That is perhaps one of the cruellest things about losing a child. The relationship continues inside you, but you can no longer reach the person on the other side of it.

There is nowhere for the questions to go.

A few weeks before Liana died, we had an open and honest conversation. I told her something no mother ever imagines saying to her child.

“I can’t live without you.”

She looked at me calmly and said, “Yeah, you can, Mum. You need to look after my sister. You’ll do it really well.”

She was 22 years old, reassuring me about the life I would have to live without her.

And she was right, although I didn’t want her to be.

I have lived without her.

Not because I discovered some extraordinary strength. Not because time healed me. Not because I found a way to leave the grief behind.

I have lived because my body kept doing what bodies do. It breathed. It woke. It carried me through one day and into another, even when every part of me wanted to move in the opposite direction.

But living without someone is not the same as no longer being connected to them.

Liana still exists in the way I think, the choices I make and the words I write. She is part of every version of me that has come since. The relationship has changed beyond recognition, but the love itself has not disappeared.

Perhaps that is why I still wonder if she is okay.

The question is not really a failure to understand that she has died. It is love continuing to reach for her.

Grief is full of questions that have no sensible place to land.

Would she like this?

What would she say?

Would she be proud of me?

Does she know what has happened?

Is she somewhere?

Is she okay?

People sometimes speak about acceptance as though it brings all these questions to an end. As though eventually the bereaved mind settles into certainty and stops searching.

That has not been my experience.

I accept that Liana died. I have had no choice but to accept the physical reality of her absence. But acceptance has never meant becoming comfortable with it. It has never meant that my love suddenly understands where to go.

So I allow the questions now.

I don’t correct myself for asking them. I don’t insist that they make sense. Grief is not a problem of logic, and love has never required proof before it speaks.

When I wonder whether my daughter is okay, I am still mothering her in the only way I can.

I am thinking of her.

I am reaching for her.

I am loving her from here.

And perhaps that is all the question ever was.

Love, calling after someone who can no longer answer.