FLY WELL MY LITTLE STAR

Dear E’,

Every day for the past year, I have felt pieces of myself die, yet I could not grieve. How does one find peace when home lies six feet beneath the earth? I fell to my knees, hugging your lifeless body, and cried with every beat of my heart, every fragment of my soul, hoping my tears could bring you back. I would give up forever just to feel your embrace one more time.

I still replay the memory of the last smile you gave me that morning. If only I could turn back the hands of the clock and remain stuck in that rewind. Grief has been a complex companion ,it ebbs and flows, and within it lives a strange kind of strength: the strength to keep going, to honor your memory by living each day fully, to seek beauty in a world that often feels colorless and gray, to believe that, eventually, the pain will soften and the loneliness will become part of the tapestry of life.

These past two weeks have been hell and back. I have felt emotions too heavy for words;anger, despair, longing. Unexpected life events crashed into me like waves I did not see coming, leaving my thoughts scattered like frightened birds in the darkness. Every night, I pray to fall asleep before I fall apart, yet sleep eludes me when silence has replaced the rhythm I once knew. How do I close my eyes when I cannot feel your little kicks, your warmth beside me, or those late-night snuggles that made the world seem safe?

I burnt August like a candle lit in the abyss, leaving only smoke and the faint scent of what once was. September arrived in tears, and my heart became a mist of pain and loneliness. All I have left are five years of memories, fragile yet unbreakable, a bond that neither time nor distance can sever. You were not just my son ,you were my best friend, my reason to breathe on the darkest days. Loving you was the easiest thing I have ever done; losing you is the hardest.

As I lay in the ubiquity of this grief, the new year dawns upon me. When I am broken inside, I tend to break things around me that are not really broken, leaving emptiness in my wake, no reason to dream anymore. That is how I feel when shadows visit. I let them stay, consuming my heart like 3 a.m. thoughts in the dark, hiding my vulnerability from the pain that never truly leaves. How did I end up so sad at such a young age? It feels as if something broke inside me, leaving shadows that linger.

Yet still, I hope. I still look for that sunshine, that light that might erase the shadow of sadness cast upon me by the absence of my best half. I speak to you, I write to you, I search among the stars for you every night. My love for you lives in every fragment of me and will remain with you even beyond death. In another lifetime, may we reincarnate and bloom together in a love that endures forever, our souls intertwined, bound only by love that persists through the woes of time.

Grief has not left me unchanged. It has taught me the contours of my own resilience, the unrelenting depth of a mother’s love, and the strange beauty of survival. Even in solitude, even in heartbreak, I carry you. My writing, my memory, my tears, they are all dedicated to you. And in that devotion, I find the courage to continue, to breathe, to honor what was ours and what will always remain.

Love to infinity,

Mom