I’ve come to realize that grief and justice share the same silence. The kind that asks, “Why must this happen?” and knows there will never be an answer that feels fair.

In law, we’re taught that justice is about balance, about restoring what was taken, or at least acknowledging that something wrong has occurred. But grief laughs at that notion. There’s no restitution for death. No appeal for time lost. No jurisprudence that can make the absence of a parent lawful in the heart.

Yet somehow, grief has made me more devoted to justice. Maybe because loss sharpens your sense of what’s fragile, what’s sacred, what should never be taken for granted. It teaches you that behind every case file, statute, or motion lies a story of someone’s pain, someone who, like you, just wanted life to be fair for once.

Before, I used to think law was about order. Now I think it’s about mercy. About creating spaces where human suffering is seen, recognized, and dignified. Because when you’ve grieved, you stop treating pain as theoretical. You start seeing its fingerprints on everything.

Philosophy taught me to question meaning; grief taught me to live without needing every answer. Law sits between them, the place where reason meets compassion, and we try, however imperfectly, to turn empathy into structure.

There’s no justice for the dead, only for the living who learn from them. Maybe that’s the quiet truth my parents left me, that the law I practice, the words I write, and the peace I seek must all carry the weight of remembrance, but not the paralysis of pain.

Justice, like healing, is not about returning to what was lost. It’s about ensuring the loss meant something.

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