Grieving the Loss of a Child - Personal Essay

"When we lose our children, we don't just lose them at the stage they were when they passed. We lose them at every stage we missed, and our hearts will forever ache with that knowledge. There's a whole crock of crap that says grief follows a method. It stays neatly in lines, clean, tame, strategic. When a child dies before a parent, there is nothing normal, neat clean, or tame about that.

For the rest of my life, I'll be missing the should-haves. His little years. His growing years. The moments he should be making me rip my hair out, then the sweet ones, like the day I take him to get his license. Or the day he tells me he is going to propose. Or the day that he becomes a father. I'll never get those days. Grief will never be methodical or neat.

And one thing I've learned from mothers much further along in this journey than me: grief doesn't end. Out of a broken, beating heart comes endless love as it ebbs and flows through the constant cycles of grief. Sometimes gentle, sometimes heavy. The reminders are always there. The love is always there. After all, a mother never stops loving the child she carried."



Grieving the Loss of a Child - Personal Essay