Grieving someone who is still here

There's a kind of grief nobody prepares families for: mourning a person who is alive and sitting across the table. Professionals call it anticipatory grief. Families usually call it nothing at all, because saying it out loud feels like betrayal.

And around that grief, the social circle changes. Some friends step up. Many quietly disappear — not from cruelty, mostly from helplessness. Invitations dry up. The phone gets quiet.

Both of these are normal, and neither is your fault.

How have your relationships changed since the diagnosis — and did anyone surprise you, in either direction?