Grief

People like to imagine that grief is poetic. They picture something softened by time, painted in gentle colors, shaped into a metaphor that makes sense. But real grief is nothing like that. Real grief enters a room and changes the temperature. It makes people shift in their chairs. It makes them look for doors.

Maybe that is why social events exhaust me. It is not because I avoid connection. I want connection more than anything. I want real conversations and people who stay present when life gets honest.

But I live with a truth most people spend their whole lives trying not to face. And the moment I speak it, the moment I say that my son died, everything falls silent in a way you can feel in your bones. Smiles fade. Eyes drift. The atmosphere becomes careful and thin. Suddenly I am holding a truth that no one wants to look at directly.

I do not want pity. I do not want to be fixed. Unless you can bring back my son, parts of my heart will remain shattered. And I have worked hard to accept that. I have stopped trying to patch the cracks or pretend they are not there. Those cracks are the shape of my love for him. They are the map of everything he meant to me. This is not a wound that waits for a cure. It is a love that refuses to disappear.

I only want the world to stop acting like my son’s life and his death are subjects that must be avoided. His story is not a burden. It is not too heavy to carry. It is simply the truth of my life.

He lived.

He mattered.

He was extraordinary.

He was magic.

And the pain of losing him is not something I hide in order to keep others at ease. It is the air I breathe. It is the reality I wake up with every day, whether anyone else is brave enough to stay in the conversation or not.”

Today I wrote, cried, threw up, and cried again. It is the price of something rare and powerful and fucking real. And even on days like this, when I feel completely wrecked by it, I still know I would never trade the love that made this grief possible. And now, I am going to pass the fuck out. I love you guys. I love you, Ro.