When the Ground Turns to Sinking Sand

I can fake a smile. I can fake a laugh. I can pretend I’m okay. But I’m not.

Spring is coming—the water is thawing, the sky is blue again, and life is returning. But instead of feeling renewed, I feel hollow. How can the world celebrate new beginnings when my son is gone? What’s the point of rebirth when my heart is still frozen in loss?

And yet, I pick myself up. I force myself to keep going. Because I have to.

I have another child who needs me. A husband. Siblings. People who love me, even when I feel unlovable. As much as I want to run—to disappear—I can’t. The weight of grief is suffocating, but love keeps me tethered to this earth.

Some days, that love is the only thing that keeps me here.

I have been going to therapy since Samson passed. It has opened wounds I thought were long buried—wounds from my own childhood. The abuse, the instability, the chaos. Losing a child is unbearable on its own, but when it reawakens the ghosts of the past, the weight feels impossible to carry.

How do you cope? That’s what I’m still trying to learn.

I struggled with depression and anxiety long before I lost my son, but now, it’s amplified tenfold. Every moment is consumed by him. Morning—Samson. Midday—Samson. Night—Samson. His accident replays in my mind like a cruel loop. I beg God to let me rewrite that day, to give me another chance. How could this have been prevented? What if I had done something different?

But there are no answers. Just silence.

The silence is deafening. I hate the silence.

I wish I could hear God’s voice—audibly, clearly. I wish I had answers. I wish I knew why.

Why Samson? Why did it have to be him? Why not someone else—someone throwing their life away, someone who wanted to be gone? Why my child? Why my son? I will always wonder.

People say, Everything happens for a reason. No. Absolutely not. You can quite literally go screw yourself with that answer. Because some things don’t happen for a reason. Some things happen because this world is cruel, chaotic, and filled with shit.

And now, over a year later, I still grapple with the haunting question—how? How could this happen? Why Samson? Why our family?

Why did this have to happen to Gabe? Why does he have to be an only child now? How is it fair that he has to grow up carrying this loss?

Why did my family have to shatter after years of trying to hold it together? We had fought so hard, and for the first time, it finally felt like we were okay—like we had found steady ground.

But that ground has turned to sinking sand.

I don’t have a good ending—because not everything ends with a happy ending.

I end with love. My love for my children. An unending love for my boys—one that death cannot dissolve, one that time cannot erase.

So I take it as it comes. One minute, one hour, one day at a time.