I took a walk this May evening, after a few days worth of rain. The birds were chirping in their bright spring notes. I walked along, looking up at the sky and feeling my heart open and soften.

My friend Mary messaged me today, sending a sweet video of her son, Mike, playing the guitar while his sister, Kristy sang. The song was a Taylor Swift tune, “If I Die Young.”

I wrote this to Mary after I listened, for Mary has buried her son, Joey. She will tell you that time is of no note when you outlive your child.

I wrote to her, “Any of us who have buried our children know it affects us for the rest of our lifetime. There is simply no erasing it. We don’t feel we are special, but that we have had to put our roots down deep into courage to simply survive without them.”

After your child is no longer with you, you walk with sorrow a step behind you. Over the days, weeks, months and years, it shadows you. It wants something from you. It wants acknowledgement. You never got it from the community or even from your family. It wasn’t possible. You can only get it from your own deep grief.

You also carry a sense of guilt that you survived, outlived your child. And the guilt is felt towards your other children, who had to watch you grieve, while enduring their own. The family has suffered a mortal wound.

It is this that makes me a writer. I went deeper after my husband died. Now if you think you have heard the last of this from me, you would be wrong. Not only do I write of it, I also write what is on the other side of it.

Mary and I understand each other; we know how the other one feels. And we truly carry a burden that the heart ceaselessly knows. The heart is faithful.

Well, now I’ve written this and you may think I am telling this story too often. Not me. I know it will reach deeply into at least one person’s heart. We must tell our stories to help others who have lost children and others who may face it in the future.

Mary answered back:

“It is so true. No one can possibly imagine it without living it. Our lives have been divided into before and after and it will always be so. What’s amazing to me, Vicki…is that we physically survive it. Emotionally, it is still questionable for me; but I thought my broken heart would stop beating, literally. I wouldn’t have cared if it had. It’s a waste of energy trying to get anyone to understand.”

And so Mary and I share a bond neither of us wanted. Even though love is stronger than death, the ones left behind walk with a limp, for they, like Jacob, have wrestled with God. We are blessed by the loss on some higher level; that I believe, or it would not have been allowed for it to happen. We are grateful we had them for a little while. Such a little while.

Vicki Woodyard