The Q life Grief Journey

A mother’s grief is something the world can’t quite explain. It doesn’t follow rules. It doesn’t fade on a schedule. It doesn’t behave the way people think it should.

It is raw.
It is relentless.
It is stitched into the deepest part of your heart because that is where your child has lived since the moment they took their very first breath.

When Quinten died, a part of me went with him.
Not because I wanted to leave this world,
but because he was woven into every part of who I am.
He was my youngest child, my only boy, my Momma’s boy, even at 34. And losing him has felt like losing gravity, like the ground beneath me shifted and hasn’t settled back into place.

A mother’s grief is different because it begins at birth.
From the moment you hold your child in your arms, you make an unspoken promise:
I will protect you.
I will care for you.
I will keep you safe.

And when life hands you something you cannot protect them from, something as cruel and merciless as cancer, that promise cracks in ways that feel unbearable.

A mother’s grief holds love and guilt and anger and longing all tangled together.
It wakes with you.
It follows you from room to room.
It lies down beside you at night.

People may see me smile, cook, talk, hold my grandbabies, and continue living, and all of those things are real.
But underneath, the grief is still there, quiet and steady, like a pulse I didn’t ask for.

A mother’s grief is hearing a song and feeling your chest collapse.
It’s seeing a photo and losing your breath for a moment.
It’s reaching for your phone to text him before remembering you can’t.
It’s waking up from sleep and feeling that half-second of normalcy before reality hits all over again.

It is the ache of the arms that can no longer hold your child.
The longing to hear “I love you, Momma” just one more time.
The wish, the impossible wish, for even a minute more.

People say time heals all wounds.
But a mother’s grief isn’t a wound.
It’s a new place inside you, a sacred, painful room where love and loss sit side by side.

Some days, the door to that room is wide open, and the grief floods in without mercy.
Other days, it stays cracked just enough to remind you that it’s still there, softened, but never gone.

And yet, amid the ache, there is this truth:
A mother’s grief is proof.
Proof that your child lived.
Proof that they mattered.
Proof that the bond between you cannot be undone by death.

Grief is the price of love, and my love for Quinten is endless.

I will carry this grief because it is the last thing he left in my hands.
And I will carry it with honor, because it means he was real, he was mine, and he changed my life in ways that will echo for the rest of my days.

A mother’s grief doesn’t end.
But neither does a mother’s love.
And somehow, in ways I am still learning, those two truths walk together, one teaching me to endure, the other teaching me to live.