Some moments just break me wide open.
I wish I could say I’ve learned to live with the ache. That I’ve figured out how to carry this grief and still move through life with some kind of peace. But the truth is—I’m still figuring that out. Still trying to understand how to breathe around the hole that losing my son left in me. Some days, I function. Other days, I just don’t.
Today, a photo memory popped up on my phone.
When I saw it, I smiled. I really did. And then, just as quickly, I felt this overwhelming urge to throw my phone across the room. I didn’t—but I wanted to. And right after that came the tears, uncontrollable and deep, like they came from a place inside me I can’t even name.
It was Josh, standing on the banks of the Little Red River in Heber Springs, holding up a trout he had just caught. His face was glowing with pride. He looked so alive. So content. Fishing was his happy place, his escape. He loved it there, and when he sent that photo to me a couple years ago, I remember feeling the warmth of his joy, like he was letting me in on something sacred.
My heart always aches for him. That ache lives in me now. But sometimes—like today—the pain isn’t just a quiet hum in the background. It’s a roar. A tear in the fabric. A moment where it feels like the stitches barely holding my heart together rip wide open again, and I’m left bleeding in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day.
I didn’t expect that today. But maybe that’s part of what grief is—it doesn’t ask permission. It shows up in the photos, in the memories, in the silence that follows. It hijacks a moment and turns it inside out.
I’m still learning how to be in this. Still figuring out how to live with the memories that both warm me and wreck me. Still trying to understand how to hold love and loss in the same breath.
If you’re walking through something like this too, just know—I see you. You’re not alone.
—Dawn 💔🎣
