Mosaic of Loss

Around two years ago, PITT published my essay “Sorrow." Sadly, my son remains stuck in delusions and his life has imploded. While I am finding my way back toward equilibrium, sorrow stays. I imagine other PITT mothers and fathers also endure an unsolvable ache. Our children have been stolen. How could we not be sorrowful each day?

PITT essays and readers’ comments offer compassionate company. If your child has also been hijacked by a vicious mind virus, you are on the front lines with awareness about the barbarism of what’s actually going on.

I’m writing this essay to invite readers to create a verbal mosaic of how we experience the cruel, ambiguous loss of our child.

I’ll go first:

A lonely grief. I gaze at a photo of my husband with our son smiling in his cub scout uniform. But I don’t show my husband, as it will trigger his rage and pain. We seldom share memories about our son. Even with sympathetic others outside this horror, there is lack of outrage, which exacerbates loneliness.

Feeling untethered to eighteen years of raising my son. Not only does my son seem like a ghost, but I am a ghost in the before life of my close family of four.

My husband and his only son played chess, watched Myth Busters, backpacked, and enjoyed nerdy conversations. That and more with his son are all gone. So poignant, so sad.

Coffee with a friend, a walk under a deep blue sky, pickleball, a good meal—yet melancholy lurks about my precious son trading in his health and potential for a destructive fantasy.

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Your Turn:

Perhaps you have been depleted by the trauma around your child in peril, or you’ve been intimidated about writing your own PITT essay. Here’s an invitation to share in the comments one or a few nuances around the loss of your son or daughter to an obscene ideology.

May we all feel less alone as we yearn for our child to reclaim whatever health and potential is still possible, and to reconnect with themselves and their families. May we understand that acceptance differs from defeat as we acknowledge that our child may stay lost. May we embrace remaining blessings in our lives, rather than sink into despair.

If you are inclined to offer a comment, thank you for the courage and wherewithal to express what can feel beyond tears. Our lives and our children have been fragmented. Sentence fragments are more than okay to create our verbal mosaic of loss amid the web of lies.

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Our Mosaic of Loss:

Ideas for sharing about a lost son or daughter:

• How a moment or whole day can be blindsided with your primal loss
  

• A treasured memory of your child
  

• What offers solace — an activity, quotation, movie, excerpt (perhaps from a PITT essay)
  

• How you make sense of the incomprehensible
  

• Whatever emerges around how your loss shows up in your day-to-day life

Your Comments: