Dear Grieving Mom,
First, I’d like to tell you how sorry I am for the loss of your child. I, too, lost my child. I know the screaming pain, the unbearable days, the overwhelming struggle, and the wanting to die, too. But I also know the little joys, smiles, and desire to live.
When my son took his own life 12 years ago, I was paralyzed with grief. At the time, I wrote in my journal that grief felt like a cloud in my chest, that I was slogging through wet cement, and that my heart was broken so badly I didn’t know if I would recover. In my grief, I felt I was every woman who lost a child. Sometime during that first year, I wrote the following poem, and I share it with you: my love letter to you. Know that I am with you on your grief journey.
I am every woman who has lost a child.
I hold your sorrow in my heart until it swells and bursts through my mouth in wails and moans. Until it seeps through my eyes in a waterfall of tears.
I am every woman who has lost a child.
I am the pioneer woman who buried her child along the trail.
I am the refugee woman who lost her child to hunger.
I am the woman who lost her child to murder.
I am the struggling mother who lost her child to illness.
I am the mother who lost her son and only child to suicide.
I am every woman who lost a child.
Dear mothers, I hold your joyful memories of your child in my mind. I hold the yearned for embraces in my arms. I feel the warm kisses of your child, young man, young woman on my cheek. I hear the stories, laughs, murmurs, and quiet conversations between you and your child in my ears.
I step forward with those who have come before me on the grief journey – my grandmother, great-grandmothers, and aunts. We struggle, stumble, and fall back but hold on together and are set right. We are here now to support you.
Dear mothers, until that day we are reunited with our children, their heads on our shoulders, arms embraced, soft kisses felt – I am every woman who has lost a child.
