Handle With Care

My husband and I are still learning how to walk through the world as parents of three children — one of whom is not alive. We are still hashing out how to understand each other in this new identity. How to carry our grief. When to disclose it. Whether to present it immediately to the stranger across from us at a dinner party… or hold it quietly in our own chest.

I lean toward disclosure.

Almost immediately.

If I’m in a new conversation and someone asks about my kids, I want to say, “I have three boys. My oldest son died.”

I don’t want to wait three conversations in. I don’t want to feel like I’m holding my breath.

A girlfriend once told me she feels that same held breath in new conversations until she can share that her daughter has Down syndrome. It’s such a defining, important part of her life that it feels disorienting not to say it. Like she’s leaving out a chapter that explains everything else.

That’s how I feel about William.

Being a bereaved mom is not a small detail about me. It rearranged my nervous system. It reordered my priorities. It changed my marriage, my friendships, my work, my body, my faith.

It is not an accessory.

Nick doesn’t feel the same urgency to lead with it. He will never lie. If you ask how many children he has, he will always say three. But he doesn’t feel compelled to introduce himself through the lens of loss.

And neither of us is wrong.

We are learning — slowly — to respect each other’s choices. To show up for one another even when our instincts differ. To make space inside our marriage for two grief styles to coexist.

And one of the clearest places this difference shows up is in something as simple as a T-shirt.

When I choose to wear my “Bereaved Mom” shirt, it’s not because I’m trying to shock anyone. It’s not because I want to throw tragedy in someone’s face.

Most of the time, I wear it because I want a visible sign that says:

Handle with care.

When someone breaks their leg and shows up to a party on crutches, everyone adjusts. People move chairs. They clear space. They ask if they need a drink. They instinctively soften.

The injury is visible.

You can see the cast. You can see the limp.

You understand that something is broken.

Being a bereaved mom is a type of broken you cannot see.

No one can look at me in the grocery store and know that my son died.

No one can see that certain songs still split me open. That school drop-offs can still sting. That anniversaries live in my body.

So sometimes I wear the shirt because I am tender. Because I am not operating at 100%. Because part of me is permanently cracked.

It’s not a warning.

It’s an invitation.

If you see the shirt, come closer.

Ask me about him.

Ask me about William.

Don’t immediately shut down or look away or change the subject because you’re uncomfortable. I promise you — the discomfort of talking about him is smaller than the weight of pretending he didn’t exist.

When you turn away quickly, when you say “Oh… I’m so sorry” and rush off, it reinforces the idea that my grief is too much. That I am too much.

But I’m not.

I’m just a mom who loves her son.

And sometimes I need the world to know that before we talk about the weather.