A song that breaks you. A friend who disappears. Grief’s surprises

Grief can find us in a familiar song, and comfort can come from someone we never expected. In this month’s column, Drew Scott reflects on music’s power to deepen and ease the pain of loss, while Carole Trottere explores how grief changes our friendships and reveals the people who keep showing up.

Drew Scott on music and memory

Music, especially a love song, is tightly linked to autobiographical memory and the brain’s emotional circuits. A song associated with the person you lost, a shared time, or even a general mood of loss can flood you with vivid sensory and emotional recall. I fall apart when I hear my late wife’s favorite song by Neil Diamond.

That sudden immersion can feel like the grief is sharper or more present than it was moments before.

Sad or melancholic music can also create a feedback loop: It matches and amplifies the feeling, sometimes making the sadness feel heavier or more inescapable in the moment. For some people this is overwhelming; the emotion gets bigger before any release happens.

But why can it also ease your grief?

Music gives structure and permission to feel what is already there. When a piece of music “gets” the sadness, loneliness or longing, it can reduce the isolation of grief — someone or something is speaking the same emotional language. That validation alone often brings a measure of relief.

Music externalizes the feeling, lets it move through you, and sometimes carries it somewhere slightly different by the end of the track. Dopamine and other neurochemical responses to music can create moments of comfort, beauty or even bittersweet pleasure alongside the pain. Certain songs become anchors or rituals that help people stay connected to what they’ve lost without being completely undone by it.

Context matters enormously. The same piece of music can devastate one day and feel steadying the next, depending on your energy, environment and timing in the grieving process.

Never, ever underestimate the power of a love song.

Carole Trottere on the friends who show up

As if losing someone we love isn’t difficult enough, there’s another unexpected consequence of grief that no one really prepares us for: Our relationships often change.

I know. That’s probably the last thing you want to hear.

You may be thinking, “Wait a minute. Isn’t the fact that my person is gone enough to deal with? Now you’re telling me I might not be able to count on the people I thought would always be there?”

Well, yes. But don’t despair. There’s another side to this story.

Grief has a way of revealing people to us, sometimes in surprising ways. Those we assumed would be our greatest sources of comfort may disappear, while others we barely knew step forward with extraordinary kindness.

In the beginning, during those first devastating days and weeks, friends and family often surround us. There are phone calls, visits, meals and offers to help. But as time passes, some people begin to expect us to “move on,” “get over it” or “get back to our old selves.”

Oh, if only grief worked that way.

The truth is, grief makes some people terribly uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. They don’t know what to do, so they do nothing. And sometimes, they simply disappear.

It’s not necessarily because they don’t care. Often, they just don’t understand. And like it or not, we sometimes become their teachers.

But here’s the beautiful part. Among those who drift away, you will discover what I like to call angels in disguise.

After my son Alex died suddenly eight years ago, a woman I worked with began coming into my office every single day just to give me a hug. We weren’t close friends, just casual colleagues. But that simple gesture meant more to me than she could possibly have known.

No advice. No awkward attempts to make me feel better. No words at all.

Just a hug.

And then there are the friends who, year after year, remember Alex’s birthday and send me a card. Their message is simple but profoundly meaningful: “I haven’t forgotten Alex.”

For a grieving parent, those four words are priceless.

I also found myself becoming part of a community I never wanted to join: mothers who had lost children to opioids and fentanyl. Yet these women have become some of the most important people in my life.

We don’t need to explain why birthdays and anniversaries are difficult, or why an ordinary Tuesday can suddenly become unbearable. We understand why hearing our children’s names matters so much. We know that grief doesn’t follow a timetable.

We just get each other.

And when one of us is struggling, the others step in. We take turns holding each other up.

Over time, you begin to realize that grief hasn’t just changed your life. It has changed you. You are navigating a world you never expected to inhabit, becoming someone you never planned to be. And sometimes, the people who accompany you on that journey will change, too.

Some relationships will fade. Others will deepen. And entirely new friendships may emerge, built on a level of understanding you never knew you needed.

So don’t spend all your energy mourning the people who aren’t there for you. You have enough to mourn already.

Instead, pay attention to the ones who show up. The ones who remember. The ones who aren’t afraid to say your loved one’s name. The ones who sit beside you when there is absolutely nothing they can say to make things better.

Those are your angels in disguise.

And sometimes, in the midst of the worst thing that has ever happened to you, they remind you that there is still goodness, kindness and love in the world.

Share your thoughts, questions

Have an experience to share or a question about navigating loss? Readers are invited to write to Carole at [email protected] or Drew at [email protected].

About the authors

Carole Trottere is an advocate for addressing the fentanyl and opioid crisis. Her son, Alex, died in 2018 of fentanyl poisoning. She has been published in Newsday, Psychology Today and other regional publications. She is currently the media director for The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook. Trottere lives in Old Field.

Drew Scott is a 50-year broadcast journalist who lost his twin granddaughter, Hallie Rae Ulrich, whom he and his late wife raised, to a heroin- and fentanyl-laced overdose in 2017. Scott helped found and operate opioid task forces in several Long Island towns. He currently works as communications director for the Town of Brookhaven.

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Top: In this month’s grief column, Drew Scott and Carole Trottere reflect on music, loss and the friends who show up. (Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash)