Three years. It’s hard to fathom how quickly time can pass when it feels like a lifetime since my world was torn apart. Three years of living in the silence, in the shadow of a loss that no one can truly understand unless they’ve lived it. Three years since I lost my son.
In those first few months, I was wrapped up in a fog, stumbling through days that felt like I was underwater, everything muffled and distant. But as time goes on, life continues. People keep moving, and you’re expected to move on with them. But here’s the thing no one tells you: you don’t really move after you lose a child. You just change. The person you were before doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, you become a version of yourself that’s been altered by loss and grief.
I meet new people now, they meet me 3 years after my loss.
And that’s when I feel it—the space that opens up between me and everyone else. It’s as if the loss creates a distance so great that I can no longer quite reach anyone. I’m walking in a crowd of people, but they don’t see me. A mother who had a son. A mother who has lived 3 years without her son has died.
Today I remember the years before and honor the 3 years after.
I acknowledge my identity is no longer just mine. It was once entwined with yours—my role as your mother, my joy in your smile, our hands holding, a bath time rituals, movies and the stories we shared, the plans we made. Losing you didn’t just take away a person I loved, it took away a part of me that was whole. And now, I navigate this world, not as I once was, but as someone different, someone defined by loss.
Grief has a way of shaping you, of making you retreat into a place where you can still feel connected to what you’ve lost but also distant from the world. The quietness isn’t just about sadness—it’s about a fear of being seen, of being asked to explain something so deep that no words can ever make sense of it.
Three years have passed, but in some ways, I feel like I’m just beginning to understand what it means to keep moving, to keep living, in this world without you. People walk around me, meeting me, getting to know me, but what they don’t realize is that I’m carrying something invisible—something that makes me feel both present and absent at the same time. I am here, but I am not.
Three years later, and I still don’t know if I’ve built up a wall or if I’ve just become invisible. But I do know that the sadness has settled into the corners of my life, and that’s a story I will carry with me forever.
Thank you Jack for guiding my way. Leading me in sorrow. Showing me a great love. A lens that is sacred and mine.
Here's Jack! 
Jamie – I love so much how you write so beautifully and so authentic. It speaks to me so clearly. It allows for those that have experienced grief to also be seen and understood in a way so few can understand. Thank you for your words, your insight and your heart. I can feel it so deeply for you and for sweet Jack. Jack was so incredibly lucky to have such profound love around him. May you both still feel that radiating love!