I had a dream of you last night.  Its been so long.  The familiar clothes you always wore.  Your hair the way it was.  I hugged you and I felt it right through my dream like you were hugging back.  No words…I try to look at the world for you here now.  All the things you saw up close.  The beauty in nature.   Where you found peace and kindness.  Its how I keep you here with me .   You will always be my favorite thing about my life.

Ill always remember you  said this

They will never know how much the memory of the simplest moment means so much to hear.  10 years of carrying you through every day.

No one tells you what it feels like to keep breathing after your child stops. Not in a poetic way. Not in a spiritual way. In a purely physical, disorienting way—like your lungs are committing some kind of betrayal by continuing without permission.

This wasn’t part of the plan. It wasn’t hidden in the fine print of parenthood. We’re taught to expect scraped knees, late-night fevers, heartbreaks we can’t fix. We’re not taught how to survive the moment when the future you were promised simply evaporates. One second, your child exists in the world. The next, they don’t. And somehow you are still here, expected to carry on as if the laws of reality weren’t just violently rewritten.

I still catch myself waiting for proof this is a mistake. A text that won’t come. A door that won’t open. A voice I know better than my own that will never call my name again. My brain keeps scanning for them like muscle memory, refusing to accept the update that says they’re gone forever. My body remembers holding them. My arms still expect weight. That’s the cruelest part—your instincts don’t get the memo.

Other parents talk about graduations and jobs and grandchildren. I listen politely, while inside I am standing in a room that has no future left to imagine. My child’s timeline just… ended. No next phase. No “one day.” Just a brutal full stop in a story that wasn’t finished being written.

People tell me I’m strong. I don’t feel strong. I feel like someone hollowed me out and left the shell standing. I get out of bed because gravity still works and the world doesn’t pause for grief. Not because I’ve accepted anything. Not because I’m okay.

Losing a child doesn’t just break your heart. It breaks your identity. It breaks your understanding of how life is supposed to work. It leaves you loving someone who no longer has a place to receive that love.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. It still doesn’t make sense. And I don’t think it ever will.

But I am here. Loving a child who is no longer alive. Carrying a grief that will never graduate into something softer. Learning how to exist in a reality I never agreed to.

And that is my life now.

© Love & Loss

I Wouldn’t Wish the Pain, But I Would Wish the Perspective

I wouldn’t wish this ache on anyone—not even on my worst enemy.
But the clarity?
The way grief sharpens everything until only what truly matters remains?
That… I’d wish on the world.

Because when you lose someone you love—truly lose them—
life is never the same.
There’s the world before.
And then there’s the one after.

Grief strips away the unimportant.
It silences the noise.
It burns through the pretending.
And what’s left standing is raw, sacred, and painfully real.

You see time differently.
You speak more honestly.
You stop saving joy for later.
You take the trip. You say “I love you.”
You hold people tighter and forgive more freely.

Loss teaches you how fragile everything is—
and in that fragility, you find the courage to live more boldly.
Not perfectly.
But purposefully.

I would never wish the pain,
but I’d give the perspective to anyone willing to receive it.
Because it wakes you up.
And if there’s anything this grief has taught me,
it’s that presence is everything.
And time… is the most precious thing we’ll ever hold.

Writer unknown

I sent this to my son once and he said “Mom that is me in a nutshell”.  It can be a blessing and a curse to feel more than others.  Your expectations can always be let down.  I miss you Billy and all that you were.  You were my favorite human .