A letter to someone who passed away
A letter to someone who passed away is written to them directly, knowing they won't read it and no one else has to. Start with their name, say what you didn't get to say, tell them what you miss and what has happened since, and end however feels true. It won't bring closure on its own, and letters alone haven't been well tested.1 Grief therapists do use them as one technique.2
How to use these prompts. Pick one group, or a single prompt, and write for ten minutes. Spelling, length and tone don't matter, and the letter can take a week. Want a frame first? The five steps and an example letter come after the prompts. If it starts to be more than you can carry tonight, put the pen down and call someone you trust. If you're thinking about ending your life, the crisis resources below are there for you.
Starting the letter
For when the page is blank. These help you find the first line, which is often the hardest.
What would you call them if they walked into the room right now, and what would you say first?
Answer this with JoyWhere are you sitting as you write? Describe it to them, the way you'd describe it on a phone call.
Answer this with JoyBefore you write a word, notice where you feel them in your body right now: your chest, your throat, your hands. Start the letter there.
Answer this with JoyWhat you didn't get to say
Many letters exist for this. Write the words that were left out, whether there was no time or no chance.
If you'd known the last time was the last time, what would you have said?
Answer this with JoyWhat you miss
Be specific. "I miss you" is true. The details are what make the letter theirs and no one else's.
Describe one ordinary thing they did that you'd give anything to see again.
Answer this with JoyWhat's a smell, song or food that brings them back, and what happens in you when it does?
Answer this with JoyTelling them what's happened since
It can feel strange to give news to someone who's gone. Write it anyway, the way you'd have told them on a Sunday call.
What has happened in the family since they died that they'd want to know about?
Answer this with JoyWhat would they be proud of you for this year, even something small?
Answer this with JoyGuilt and the "if only"
Guilt is a common part of grief.3 On paper, the "if only" is something you can look at. In your head it just plays on repeat.
The "if only" I keep coming back to is ___. Write it in full, then write what you knew at the time, before you knew how it ended.
Answer this with JoyIf they could write back about this, what do you think they'd say? Write their reply in their words.
Answer this with JoyAnger and the hard feelings
The NHS lists anger toward the person you've lost among the feelings grief can bring.3 Anger doesn't cancel the love.
A letter is one of the few places it can go where it won't hurt anyone.
For a hard or complicated relationship
Not every relationship was warm. You can grieve the person, the relationship you never got, or both at once, and none of these prompts asks you to forgive.
What are you ready to stop carrying for them, and what are you keeping?
Answer this with JoyFor a birthday, anniversary or holiday
Grief often flares around significant dates.4 A short letter on the day can give it somewhere to go.
Today is ___. Tell them how you're spending it, and who is with you.
Answer this with JoyWhat tradition of theirs are you keeping this year, and which one are you letting go?
Answer this with JoyEnding the letter
There's no right way to sign off. Some people say goodbye. Others say they'll write again.
After you finish, sit for a minute. What feels different in your body, if anything, and what feels the same?
Answer this with JoyPutting it together: five steps
Use these as a frame. Some letters are five lines long. Some take a month.
- Open with what you called them: Mom, Pops, Nana, a nickname. The name they answered to, not the formal one.
- Tell them why you're writing: Today was their birthday, or you found their handwriting, or you miss them.
- Say the unsaid: The thank you, the sorry, the goodbye, or the question you never asked.
- Bring them up to date: What has happened since, who has changed, what they'd laugh at.
- Close in your own words: A goodbye, "talk soon", "I'll write again", or just your name.
This is an example letter written for this page, not a real person's letter.
"Dear Pops, it's your birthday, so I bought the terrible gas station coffee you liked. I never thanked you for teaching me to drive in that church parking lot. I'm sorry I didn't call more that last winter. Maya started high school. She has your stubborn chin. I miss you every Sunday. Love, Dee."
What to do with the letter
Keep it in a drawer. Read it aloud at their grave, or to someone who loved them too. Burn it, bury it or float it on water if a ritual feels right; small rituals eased grief in a set of three experiments, and the holidays page has more on that.5
Or read it to Joy and talk about what came up.
The evidence on writing to the dead
Letters are a real tool in grief therapy, and nobody has yet shown what they do on their own. Both halves of that are worth knowing before you start.
Plain emotional writing hasn't done much for grief. When recently bereaved people were randomly assigned to a standard expressive writing task, it didn't reduce their distress or their visits to the doctor.6
Focused writing looked more promising. Sixty-eight bereaved students wrote for three 20-minute sessions about making sense of the loss or finding some benefit in it, and three months later the trial found effects on prolonged grief, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.7 Benefit-finding looked strongest.7 It was one small study.
Grief treatments already use letters. The American Psychiatric Association describes online programs that let mourners express their grief in notes to the person who died,8 and Robert Neimeyer's handbook of grief therapy techniques gives a chapter to correspondence with the deceased.2
Letters alone are the gap. A 2025 article on writing to the deceased points out that grief treatments use the technique widely, yet research hasn't shown what letters add by themselves.1
How you write may matter too. Among 506 bereaved young adults, a strong ongoing bond with the person went with more distress only when they couldn't make sense of the loss.9 And in a study of people going through divorce, those stuck searching for meaning did worse after expressive writing.10
If your letters turn into the same painful loop every night, change the prompt, or take a week off.
When a letter isn't enough
Grief that stays intense nearly every day a year after the death, or makes work, sleep or relationships hard, is worth taking to a doctor or grief counselor.8 Treatment based on cognitive behavioral therapy has reduced prolonged grief symptoms.8
Joyful is an AI journaling companion, not therapy or a grief counselor.
Questions people ask
What should I write in a letter to someone who has passed away?
Write what you didn't get to say, what you miss and what has happened since. Use their name, and include small details, like their laugh or a phrase they used. Anger and guilt belong in it too.
Is it normal to write letters to someone who died?
Yes, and grief therapists use it as a technique.2 Some people write once. Others write every year on the anniversary, so the letters become a record of how the grief changed.
Will writing a letter give me closure?
Probably not in the sense of an ending. Research hasn't shown that letters alone change how grief goes.1 A goal you can reach in one sitting: one thing said that had never been said.
What do I do with the letter after I write it?
Keep it, read it aloud, share it with family or turn it into a small ritual like burning or burying it. There's no right choice, and you can change your mind later.
Can I write a letter to a pet who died?
Yes. The same steps work. The pet loss page covers that grief, which other people don't always recognize.
More prompts and tools
- Grief: what grief can feel like and why it comes in waves.
- Grief after losing a parent.
- Grief during the holidays, with a plan for the day.
- The stages of grief, each with an example.
- Feelings wheel, to find words for what you feel.