I SPEAK YOUR NAME, GABRIEL.

Ten years.

Ten years since the world as I knew it split open, leaving a raw, gaping wound that time has failed to stitch closed. Ten years of waking up and reaching for a child who is no longer there. Ten years of learning to walk with an invisible limp, carrying the weight of a grief so heavy it threatens to crush me some days.

The world assumes that grief fades, that it diminishes, that the years smooth over the jagged edges. They believe that time heals. That’s a lie. Time does not heal. Time teaches you how to carry the unbearable without screaming out loud. Time instructs you in the delicate dance of appearing ‘fine’ while still bleeding underneath. Time is a relentless teacher in the art of survival, but it does not heal.

Grief is a ghost, a shape-shifter. Some days, it’s a quiet presence sitting in the corner, watching me as I go about my day. Other days, it’s a hurricane, ripping through my soul, making it impossible to breathe. And then there are the days like today—anniversaries—where grief is a feral animal, clawing at my insides, demanding to be acknowledged, refusing to be tamed.

I can still hear the beeping of the monitors, the rhythmic hum of machines keeping him tethered to this world. The hospital smelled sterile, a mix of antiseptic and desperation. Nurses moved in a choreographed urgency, their faces composed, their voices calm, as if they had not seen the hope drain from a mother’s eyes a thousand times before.

I remember holding his tiny hand, my fingers engulfing his, whispering promises I couldn't keep. "You're going to be okay, baby. Just hold on." His little chest rose and fell with labored breaths, each one a battle against pneumonia, against a cruel world that decided 3.5 months was all the time he would get.

I remember the doctors speaking in measured tones, their words a mix of science and sorrow, preparing me for the worst. The oxygen mask, the IV drips, the frantic efforts to keep him here. And then—the stillness. The moment when the machines stopped their steady beeping, when the nurses no longer rushed, when my world caved in with the silence of a life that was no longer.

People don’t know what to say. They avoid your eyes. Or worse, they try to fix it.

“He’s in a better place.”

At ten years, I don’t have the energy to correct them anymore. But I do. In my head, I scream it—

No. A better place would be here, laughing in my kitchen, rolling his eyes at my jokes, making a mess of his room, making a future out of the beautiful boy he was. A better place would be here, alive.

Some would say, “You have to let go.”

But what they don’t understand is that a mother never lets go. She simply learns how to carry.

Grief is the shadow that follows me through every moment, stretching long and dark behind me. I hear Gabriel’s laughter in the echoes of children playing at the park. I feel his absence in the spaces he should be—at the dinner table, in the empty chair during storytime, in the milestones that will never come...

People forget. They move on. And I don’t blame them. Life is for the living.

But I am still here, standing at the intersection of what was and what could have been.

Ten years is a long time to live without your child. Ten years is a blink when the memory of holding him is still so vivid, when the scent of his skin is still imprinted in my soul.

I remember everything. The way his fingers curled around mine, the sound of his breath as he slept, the rise and fall of his tiny chest, the way I used to place my hand over his heart just to feel it beating.

I remember his eyes.

I remember the silence that followed.

Ten years, and my arms are still empty. Ten years, and I still wake up reaching for him in the dark, only to grasp at air.

There is no justice in a parent outliving their child. It goes against the order of the universe. And yet, here I am, walking through a world where my son is a memory instead of a presence.

But if love could have saved him, he would still be here.

So I love him still. Fiercely. Endlessly. Love is the only thing that death cannot take.

I speak his name. I honor his life. I carry him forward, even as the years pull me further away from the last time I saw his face. I have forgotten his face and it scares me so. 

Ten years of grief. Ten years of love. Ten years of missing my boy.

And forever to go.