Yesterday marked 8 months since Tom died. It’s been 246 days without him on this earth.

I attended my monthly grief group last night with four other moms and a dad, who all lost a child. Together with our facilitator/counselor, we talk about and support one another through the aftermath and how sad, betrayed, lost, changed and crazy we feel.

One woman’s son was a successful psychiatrist in his 40s when he died from his drug addiction. 

One woman’s son was a 15-year-old kid on a jet ski when his friend’s watercraft accidentally collided with his. 

One woman’s son was a 30-year-old man with cerebral palsy whose doctors and treatments failed him.

The husband and wife grieve a 22-year-old son whose mental illness ended with an accidental gunshot. His donated organs saved three other lives. 

My son—my beautiful, magical, talented, amazing son—was 23 when he accidentally asphyxiated himself with a plastic bag while trying to experience a form of oxygen-deprived euphoria. He was unconscious and died in less than 4 minutes. 

I feel so sad for all of us. Today I can hardly think about anything other than our deep and relentless sadness. The feeling of “why me” and “what if.” 

Each of us went to sleep the night before our sons died, unaware of how life was about to be upended. 

Then, somehow, we went to sleep the next night—the night of our sons’ deaths, unsure of how we could ever carry on. 

We wake every day since with an unimaginable hole—an unfixable hurt that is endlessly permanent and so hard to make sense of.

I’ve learned from my fellow grieving moms and dads that we aren’t entirely sure HOW we are carrying on. We just do. We just keep waking up in a reality we wish was not ours.