It has been almost 26 years, but those words still hit a place in me that regular language cannot touch.
When you lose a child, you change forever. It is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been there. It isn’t just sadness. It feels like a piece of your soul was torn away. You are left with a quiet where laughter, talking, and little footsteps used to be. A future that just disappeared too soon. Love with nowhere to go.
My son, Luijoe, left us far too early.
The pain is not as sharp now as it was at the start, but the absence never left. It is part of who I am. Some days the grief comes quietly, like a whisper. Other days it just comes out of nowhere. It brings back the birthdays we never had, the milestones we missed, and the normal days we never got to share.
People say time heals all wounds. I don’t think that is true.
Time does not erase the wound. It just teaches you how to live around it. You learn to keep going with an emptiness in your heart. You learn to smile again. You even laugh. But the love and the loss stay. You carry them both, quietly, every day.
For me, grief means holding onto the bond I still have with Luijoe. That bond did not end with death. It is my lifeline. It is how I heal, how I remember, and how I survive.
I dream of him.
I imagine him now as a man of 32. Handsome, lively, full of energy. Sometimes I look at men his age, the kids of friends who grew up into the years Luijoe never reached. Dine’s daughter. Jane’s son. I see them grown up and I smile. It is a bittersweet smile. For a second, I get a glimpse of what my Luijoe might have been.
I wonder about the man he would have become.
Would he still sing?
Created using Midjourney
I remember him at six years old, already drawn to music. He loved watching his older sisters during choir practice, his eyes wide. Pop music made him break into a dance. He would ask me to download mp3s of his favorite songs on Napster. Remember Napster? Then he would sing and dance, completely carried away by it.
Those memories are treasures. Small pieces of a life that shone, even if only for a short time.
I also wonder if he would be here with me on the coffee farm.
Would we walk through the fields together? Would he help me pick coffee cherries? Would we laugh under the trees while preparing the harvest?
When I am here, with the mountains and the quiet farm life, I sometimes imagine him right beside me. Not as the little boy I lost, but as the man he might have been.
The world tells grieving parents to move on, to heal, to let go. But a mother does not just let go. A mother remembers. A mother carries her child through every season of her life.
The tears still come. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes out of nowhere. But I don’t see them only as pain now. They are proof of love. They are the words my heart still cannot express, a language understood by those who have walked this road.
I know in my heart that one day, I will see my son again. Until then, I will carry Luijoe’s memory with me. A flame that may flicker, but will never go out.
Ours is a love story that lasts, even on the other side of the veil.
