The cruel permanence of absence.

The world doesn’t stop.

It doesn’t stop when your heart does. It doesn’t stop when your soul shatters into a million jagged pieces. It doesn’t stop when you scream into the void, begging for one more moment, one more breath, one more heartbeat.

People wake up. They go about their lives, oblivious to the fact that your world has ended. That everything you were, everything you dreamed of, everything you loved, died the day they did.

Losing a child is losing yourself. It’s the cruel theft of a future that was never meant to be rewritten. It’s birthdays that will never be celebrated, laughter that will never be heard again, tiny hands that will never reach out for yours. It’s the quiet echo of a life unfinished, of a story that was ripped from your hands before you could read the next chapter.

It’s waking up every day to the crushing weight of an empty room. It’s standing in the doorway, staring at a bed that will never be slept in again, toys that will never be played with, clothes that will never be outgrown. It’s the cruel permanence of absence.

The world tells you to be strong. But how do you find strength when your reason for living is gone? How do you breathe when every inhale is laced with pain? How do you keep moving when your body is weighed down by grief that no words could ever capture?

Time doesn’t heal this. Time only teaches you how to carry it. How to exist with a shattered heart, how to fake a smile while screaming inside, how to walk through life as a shell of who you once were.

You learn to wear a mask. You laugh when you’re dying inside. You say you’re okay when your soul is screaming. You get used to the pitying glances, the awkward silences, the well-meaning words that only tear the wound open wider.

They say it was God’s plan. They say everything happens for a reason. They say time will make it easier. But they don’t know. They don’t know what it’s like to wake up every day and remember that your child is gone. To remember that you will never hear their voice again, never hold them again, never watch them grow.

They don’t know that there is no moving on. There is no getting over it. There is only learning to live with a piece of your soul missing. There is only surviving, one breath at a time, one heartbeat at a time, one shattered day at a time.

People will forget. They will move on. But you will carry this forever. You will carry them forever. In every tear, in every whisper, in every heartbeat.

They were yours. They were your light, your joy, your everything. And now they are gone, and the world is dark, and you are lost.

But their love remains. It echoes through every shattered piece of your soul, a soft whisper in the darkness, a faint glimmer in the endless night. And somehow, that love keeps you breathing.

Because they were here. They were real. They were yours. And even death cannot take that away.

Even in their absence, they remain the heartbeat that keeps you alive