PART 2: Living With the Unlivable

There is a special loneliness in this grief. Other parents talk about milestones, school days, futures still unfolding. I listen, nod, even smile, while inside I am screaming—because my child no longer has a future for me to imagine. No next birthday. No next chapter. Just a silence where a life should still be growing.

People tell me, “You’re so strong,” as if I chose this. As if surviving is courage instead of necessity. I am not strong. I am shattered, still standing because the world does not stop when your child is gone. I wake each day in a life I never wanted, in a body that remembers holding my child and now has nothing to hold.

Burying a child changes you forever. It rewrites who you are. I will never be the person I was before. I live with a wound that will never close, with a love that has nowhere to go.

This was never supposed to happen. And yet it did. And I am still here—loving a child I will never stop missing.