Between Waves

One of the hardest parts of losing a child is discovering that the world does not stop with you.

The weeks after your life shatters, the sun still sets and rises, birds are still singing outside, cars still queue and beep in traffic. People still complain about the weather and ask what’s for dinner.

And somehow, impossibly, you are expected to continue too.

That has been one of the strangest parts of losing Woody.

Not just the pain itself, although the pain is beyond words, but the unbearable confusion of carrying on while every part of me is screaming his name daily, yearning for his return, that something is terribly wrong.

Because something is terribly wrong.

My little boy should be here.

There are moments where I still catch myself looking behind me to check he’s there, imagining him everywhere I go. Sometimes I hear a child laugh or cry and for a split second my body reacts before my mind remembers.

That split second is cruel.

People often talk about grief as sadness, but child loss feels much bigger than sadness. It feels physical. It changes the way the world looks, sounds, and feels.

It is walking around with a missing limb nobody else can see.

Some days grief is loud. It crashes into me without warning. A song. his tiny pair of shoes still on the shoe rack or his coat still hanging on the chair. Seeing little boys with brown hair running ahead of their mums.

Other days it is quieter.

Those days almost make me feel guilty.

I find myself panicking when I laugh at something or manage a normal conversation, as though loving Woody properly means I should remain frozen in the worst moment of my life forever.

But grief is not measured by how broken you look.

Love does not disappear simply because your body cannot survive in permanent agony every second of the day.

I think people imagine grief slowly shrinking over time. But for me, it feels more like life growing around it.

The grief stays giant.

I just somehow keep learning how to carry it.

And the truth is, I don’t want to “move on” from Woody.

I don’t want people to be afraid to say his name.

I don’t want his existence reduced to a tragedy people tiptoe around.

He was here.

He mattered.

He was funny, beautiful, strong, complicated, loving, and deeply wanted.

He changed me forever simply by existing.

So when I write about him, I am not refusing to heal.

I am mothering him in the only ways I still can.

I carry him into conversations.
I carry him into memories.
I carry him into ordinary Tuesdays.
I carry him into every future version of myself.

And maybe that is what continuing really is after child loss.

Not getting over it.
Not becoming the person you were before.

But learning how to walk forward while holding someone you can no longer physically hold.

That kind of love does not end.

Not even death can take that away.