It has been almost 26 years. Twenty-six years.
You would think the sheer weight of time passing would make the loss easier to explain. It doesn’t. Those words still hit a place in me that regular language cannot reach.
When you lose a child, you change. It is not just sadness. It feels like a physical piece of you was torn away. You are left with a heavy quiet where laughter used to be. You wake up expecting to hear little footsteps, but there is nothing. A whole future just vanished. All that love is left with nowhere to go.
My son, Luijoe, left us far too early.
The pain is not as sharp today as it was in those early days. But the absence never left. It became a part of who I am. Some mornings the grief comes quietly. Other days it drops right out of the sky. It brings back the birthdays we never had and the normal days we never got to share.
People tell grieving parents that time heals things. I don’t believe that is true.
Time does not erase the wound. It just teaches you how to walk around it. You learn to wake up and keep going with that empty space in your heart. You learn to smile again. Eventually, you even laugh. But the love and the loss stay. I carry both of them quietly every single day.
For me, grief means holding onto the bond I still have with Luijoe. That connection did not end with death. It is my lifeline. It is how I survive.
I dream of him.
He would be 32 now. I imagine him handsome and full of energy. I look at the kids of my friends who grew up into the years Luijoe never reached. Dine’s daughter. Jane’s son. I see them as adults and I manage a bittersweet smile. For a second, I catch a glimpse of what he might have been doing.
I wonder about the man he would have become. Would he still sing?
Created using Midjourney
I picture him at six years old. He used to sit and watch his older sisters during choir practice with these wide eyes. Then a pop song would play on the radio and he would break into a dance.
“Mom, can you download this song?” he would ask.
I would sit at computer nook. I waited for the dial-up connection to drag mp3s from Napster. Remember Napster? Then he would take over the living room. He sang and danced, completely carried away by the music.
Those moments are treasures. Small pieces of a life that shone.
I also wonder if he would be here with me on the coffee farm.
I wonder if we would walk the fields together. I can picture him helping me pick the coffee cherries. We would probably sit under the trees and laugh 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. As the man he might have been.
The world expects grieving parents to move on and let go. This doesn’t mean the world is cruel. It just means people don’t know what else to say. But a mother does not just let go. A mother remembers. We carry our children through every season of our lives.
The tears still come. Sometimes they are quiet. Sometimes they happen out of nowhere. I don’t view them only as pain anymore. 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 I will see my son again. Until then, I keep his memory close. A flame that might flicker but will never go out.
Ours is a love story that lasts on the other side of the veil. It is a little different now. But the love is still here.
.
