A year of grieving our son
When love and loss collide
One year.
12 months.
52 weeks.
365 days.
8,760 hours.
525,600 minutes.
31,536,000 seconds.
Those minutes not being able to hold my child have felt like a lifetime. Losing my beautiful son one year ago aged me on fast-forward and now the spring in my step that was supposed to last me many years to come has admittedly slowed.
Those weeks haven’t passed at all. It was only yesterday that my heart shattered and I’m still here crawling around on my knees blinded by the freshness of that moment trying to collect the pieces that scattered.
It would be a lie to tell you grief doesn’t define me now. Adding bereaved mom to the list of things that are me has overwhelmed all the other things I once was. That other person isn’t coming back any more than my darling boy is. I miss her, but them’s the facts. One of the things that has surprised me the most in the last year is how its mainly the other people who suffered profound and crippling loss who understand this.
I have talked and written about my grief a lot this year.
Maybe some of it is for me, trying to break out of the oppressive silence that follows when the flowers have turned brown and you’re left looking at a kitchen table full of dozens of empty clear glass vases that you can’t figure out what to do with.
But some it is for my Mekbul.
Why? Because after losing him I realized pretty quickly that our culture cheers for strength and turns away from the grief and pain working in people’s lives. We are uncomfortable with sadness. We reject it. In rejecting it, we leave those who are sad behind.
We desperately try to fix grief, but some things can’t be fixed, only acknowledged and cared about. I don’t need a remedy. I don’t need to “get better.” I don’t need to be told I’m so strong or receive praise when I smile. All that does for those in pain is make them feel they have to hide their reality. Like my precious boy ultimately did. It was so like him to never want to cause trouble or difficulty for the people he loved. But it was no trouble. No trouble at all.
When he was here, my husband and I reinforced with him that there was never anything he could do that would change how much we loved him. That he could mess up and it would be ok. That he didn’t have to be anything in particular to please us, just him. It might seem like a weird thing to need to remind your child, but we adopted Mekbul when he was already 11 years old and he survived a lot before we even met. Reassuring him we weren’t going anywhere and would always have his back was part of us growing together. As hard as I struggle after his death, this is something I am sure of: he knew how deeply loved he was. And he loved us in return, without hesitation. An incredible gift.
Now that he’s gone, I tell him how much I love him and miss him every night before I close my eyes to end another day without him.
By doing this, I take a moment to acknowledge the one thing that grief will never change: love.
No, everything doesn’t happen for a reason and no, there is no silver lining in life after the death of your child. All those platitudes we bubble wrap around pain to soften the sharp edges of raw horror are bullshit. If you still use these phrases to approach those in grief, please just stop.
I am not lucky to learn from my grief. I don’t care if it makes me more compassionate or more able to understand the pain others suffer or more able to appreciate the beauty or fragility of life — I’d rather have my smiling, funny, brilliant son back, thank you very much.
But today, at this dreaded one-year-without-him milestone, I want to talk about the incredible power of love.
It doesn’t end with death. I’m not talking about heaven, the afterlife, or whatever post-death consciousness you personally ascribe to. That is up to you to figure out — same for me.
What i’m talking about is the daily presence of my son in my life and the energy of love that his life created in this world. It’s everywhere. His love didn’t leave and I see it constantly.
I see it in the love and comfort our family has received this year. It was there when you sent a note, or called or posted something on social media that acknowledged his beauty, kindness or maybe something goofy he did that made you smile.
It was there if you dropped off food for us, sent flowers, shared a song with beautiful lyrics you found comforting. It was there in the handcrafted gifts that represent a desire to wrap us in comfort. I hear it in the wind chimes you sent that send soft music through the trees in my yard. In the trees you planted.
The tattoos you got, the jewelry you wear, the shirts you had made, the money you raised, the challenges you joined — all of it, all of it was love born of his life. I have been too tired and too paralyzed to properly thank everyone, but it has given me so much and the gratitude I feel is infinite.
Mekbul’s love lives on in his sisters and brother, who he was bonded to and loved more expansively than there are words for. They grieve deeply but in this last year I have watched them honor his love for them by still seeking joy in their lives now. I hate the phrase “He/She would’ve wanted you to be happy” because it implies that you should quit being sad and get on with it already, and that’s crap. But in the case of Mek’s most loved siblings, I am as certain of his desire that they live happily than of anything I have ever known. The kind of adoration they have for each other isn’t bound by time on earth.
I feel Mekbul’s love wrap around me when his best friends still check in, still drop by, still fight to change something for others that couldn’t keep their friend with them. They are so young, and yet they get what it means to support grief and talk about pain openly without fear better than most of the adults I know. They can do it because they loved him, felt loved by him, and they aren’t letting that go. He’s still here with them, and it comforts me and gives me hope more than most things.
His love has persevered in the way people have grown along with me in my grief instead of throwing up their hands and stepping away from the awfulness of it. My brothers have texted me a lot this year, when texting a lot wasn’t really our thing before. They stayed close and kept acknowledging that life was shitty and they didn’t expect that to change anytime soon. My sister wanted to fix it all for me because she is a doer and a fixer and a smoother, and after me causing her a lot of helplessness, she embraced what is and continues to sit with me in the darkest parts of the unfixable.
In the earliest days of our loss, our family and closest friends showed up for us, held us. As the days spiraled out beyond, I felt love for Mekbul arrive in remarkable ways from unexpected sources. Old friends I hadn’t been in touch with for years are some of my biggest champions now (Kim and Geralyn I’m looking at you) who have regularly reminded me that there is still laughter to be had and feelings to be eaten.
New friends, even friends I only know through social media stepped up and fueled Jeff and I with loving energy and understanding (and pizza and pies) when all we had in our tanks was exhaustion and despair. Why would people who are almost strangers love us this way? Mekbul is why. Because our love for him and the joy he brought everywhere he went doesn’t go unnoticed and it never disappears. It mattered and people who are truly good know this and respond.
I’m going to talk about grief for the rest of my days. The ugly truth of it. The extreme loneliness of it. The panic of it. I’m going to do this because maybe one time, for one person at the right moment, it will make their pain feel less overwhelming, more normal, something to keep growing around and accepting as a part of them without shame. Strength shouldn’t be defined by vulnerability we don’t share, but rather by the bravery it takes to admit we’re hurting.
I will be grieving Mek forever, until that day I wake from sleep and turn to see his beaming smile of welcome to whatever comes next.
It isn’t a bad thing, to grieve. It just means we are still so deeply, irrevocably in love.
I love you Mekbul.
