Unfiltered survival. Taken on a night I didn’t know how to keep going—but did anyway. Image credit: Diane Neas
Note to the reader: This piece is about the coded ways grieving mothers speak. It’s about what we say to survive the unbearable, and what we leave unsaid. If you’ve lost a child, I hope this helps you feel less alone. If you haven’t, I hope you’ll read with an open heart.
I have a list of answers I give when someone asks me how I am doing. They vary depending on how close to the surface my grief is that day. Well, truthfully, it’s always just beneath my skin like a bruise that never fades. Press too hard and it pulses to the surface.
I say “fine,” even when I’m not.
I say “hanging in there,” even when I’m unraveling.
I say “stabilized, eating, eliminating”. That is considered a good outcome in the animal world.
I say “living, laughing, loving,” and you laugh, which is the goal—because if you laugh, you won’t ask what I really mean.
I have an entire vocabulary now. Most bereaved mothers have learned this language. One that says just enough to end the conversation, but not so much that it opens us wide.
Because the truth? The truth is that she died. And I didn’t.
And I still don’t know what to do with that.
So instead, I answer in code. I give you the version of me you can handle. I’ve learned to protect your comfort at the cost of my truth. Because if I told you what it’s really like…you would never ask again.
But I’m protecting myself, too. There are days when telling the truth would cause me to implode on the spot. Days when I’m just trying to make it from sunup to sundown. I’m not lying to you. I’m giving myself space to take a breath.
When I say “alive” I mean: unwilling to die even if I wanted to.
When I reply “functional” I mean: still broken but making it through.
When I sarcastically say “living, laughing, loving” I mean: I’m not doing any of those things right now. Or maybe I am, but not in the way you think. Not the Hallmark version. This is survival with a grimace, not a glow. This is gallows humor in a forced lighthearted tone.
So you can laugh, not be uncomfortable and I can stay hidden.
Most people don’t want to know that children die. That love isn’t always enough. If they let it in—even for a moment—it would ruin the myth that our children are safe. That we can protect them. That we’re in control.
As much as I wish that were true… it simply isn’t.
And that truth is so devastatingly huge, so unbearable, that most people have no choice but to ignore it. Because how could anyone live every moment of every day waiting for their child to die?
I live on the other side of that coin. I am waiting for my child to come back to life.
Child loss grief isn’t tidy. It isn’t neat. It’s infinite. All consuming. Not to say other deaths don’t shake us. They do. But the death of a child tears through the center of our lives. It shatters the order we were promised. The order we were prepared to follow.
And our society doesn’t do well with grief, either. Friends, neighbors, coworkers, even well-meaning strangers – they want us to be done with it. They want us back to normal. Quickly. Quietly. Without disrupting the world around us too much. Or, maybe more accurately, without touching their world for any length of time. As if, somehow, child death is contagious.
As if proximity to our sorrow might summon tragedy of their own.
We are the cautionary tale no one wants to hear. The proof that it can happen. The walking reminder that love doesn’t guarantee survival.
We are the poster parents for dead children. We are what happens when the nightmare doesn’t end, when there’s no miracle, no second chance, no waking up.
When the life you lived with your child has come to its unnatural end.
Then comes the quiet aftermath. People stop asking—at least, not in the way they used to.
They stop wondering how you’re doing in this new life. Because they can’t hear it.
To truly listen would make it tangible. And they don’t want to know.
To hear it again—to really hear it—feels heavy to them.
Too much.
Too dark.
Too real.
To ask is to invite the specter of child death into their lives,
as if their own child might be noticed and taken.
We are wreckage that still breathes. We are left in a darkened theater, the spotlight fades, and we clutch our child’s life story to our chest.
Still, we get up. We feed the pets. We answer emails. We smile at the barista. We make it to work. We carry our grief like an extra organ. Heavy, but vital. And we find strange, sacred comfort in others who carry it, too. Not because we’re healing, exactly—but because we’re still here. And being here means something. It has to.
Eventually, people start asking again – but differently. The urgency fades. The specificity disappears. You’re no longer asked how you are in relation to the death of your child. You’re asked the way we ask a dozen people in a single day.
“How are you?”
Like there’s only one possible answer. Like the biggest thing that ever happened to you isn’t sitting right behind your eyes, waiting. So, instead of being honest, we speak in our code. Speaking in code is its own kind of fluency.
And sometimes – on the rare, quiet days – we say “fine,” and it’s almost true.
Not because the grief is gone, but because, for a moment, it isn’t the loudest thing in the room.
And, that too, is survival.
If this resonated with you:
I see you. Whether you’re speaking in code or holding your story in silence, you are not alone. Take your time. Grief has no outline you need to follow.
Words Can Express 