I’ve heard it said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” People say Queen Elizabeth II said it. Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is the words are true.
When I first heard it, I thought, that sounds harsh. Like love is some cruel deal, happiness traded for pain. But it’s not that. It’s just the truth no one wants to face.
Because when we love, we don’t think about the end. We laugh, we sit at the table together, we hold our kids close. We don’t stop and say, one day this will be gone. We can’t. We just live. And then, when loss comes, that’s when we realize. This is the cost.
Losing my son… I still can’t fully write it out. He was six. Just six. And then he was gone. A mother’s love isn’t even a choice, it’s who you are. When he died, I thought the world ended. Twenty-five years later, I still cry for him. I still miss him like it happened yesterday. The pain was so heavy I thought it would kill me. On some nights, I felt as if I were losing my mind. But I’m here. Somehow.
People talk about grief like it’s punishment. I don’t see it that way anymore. It’s proof. Proof that love was real, proof that it mattered. Every tear, every ache in my chest, all of it points to him. And the hardest part? It’s not only the past I grieve. It’s the future. The birthdays that never came. The mornings that never happened. All the things I’ll never see. That breaks me more than anything.
I kept going because I had to. His sisters needed me. His dad needed me. That’s the only reason I didn’t collapse into the pain completely. Piece by piece, I learned how to move forward. Not strong, just surviving. Maybe God gave me more time for a reason, I tell myself. Maybe to carry him in a different way.
Here’s what I know. Grief this deep comes only from love that deep. My son gave me joy in those short years. He gave me laughter. He gave me lessons I still carry. Those memories—they don’t erase the ache. But they soften it. Just enough.
Love doesn’t end with death. It changes. It gets heavier, harder to hold. But it stays. Always. That’s the one thing I remind myself when grief feels too much. It hurts because he mattered. And love—love stays.
