Curiosity in Grief: How a Simple Value Helped Me Face My Mother’s Death

When my mom was in the nursing home, I struggled deeply with walking into her room. Every time I went in, I carried a heavy mix of dread, heartbreak, and anger. She wasn’t the woman she once was—she didn’t want to talk, she often slept through visits, and when she did wake up, she would usually tell us to leave. On some level, I think she knew what she was doing, but she didn’t have the energy, maturity, or bandwidth to be present anymore.

The truth is, I was taking it personally. I was making my mom’s death mean something about me. Instead of focusing on her, I made it about my feelings—about what I was losing, about what it meant for me to watch her fade. I told my coach, “I’m really struggling. I’m having a hard time not making this about me.” Sitting next to her bed as she trembled from Parkinson’s, unable to bathe or feed herself, begging for her life to end—it broke my heart. How do you not take that personal? How do you not want to fix it?

I’m a rescuer by nature. A pleaser. I want people to feel good about themselves, to know they’re cared for. That part of me has been both beautiful and dysfunctional. It’s not always clean. But during this time, I realized that one of my greatest supports was actually one of my values—curiosity.

Curiosity became my lifeline.

Instead of walking into her room with resentment, pain, and anguish, I chose to walk in with innocence and curiosity. I asked myself: What can I learn from this? What is happening here that I don’t understand? What is this process teaching me?

Curiosity didn’t erase my suffering. I still felt the grief. But it softened it. It took enough of the focus off of my thoughts and feelings so I could focus on her. It gave me a little more room to be present, to shift my attention from my pain to her process. And that’s what really mattered.

Curiosity didn’t mean ignoring the reality or pretending everything was okay. It meant opening myself to what was unfolding—even when it was painful, even when it wasn’t what I wanted. It meant being willing to see my mom’s dying not just as an ending, but as part of a process I could witness with compassion instead of only resistance.

In grief, curiosity is a powerful value. It allows us to let go, even if just for a moment, of the weight of our own pain. It creates a window where we can see our loved one more clearly, where we can show up for them instead of drowning in ourselves. It doesn’t cure the heartbreak, but it changes the experience.

For me, curiosity kept me grounded. It kept me honest. It kept me close to my mom when I could have let my own emotions build a wall between us. And most importantly, it reminded me that this wasn’t about me—it was about loving her all the way to the end.