This grief has found a heartbeat,
It pounds beneath my shattered chest;
A slow, relentless echo
That grants my weary soul no rest.
My mind has learned the bitter truth—
Your gentle voice has long since fled;
Yet every corner of my heart
Still swears you never truly left.
The child within still calls your name,
Though silver now has crowned my hair;
He waits beside an empty door,
Convinced you'll somehow meet him there.
How long, O Lord, must sorrow burn?
How long this weight of flesh and bone?
This ache is more than tears can tell—
It feels as though my soul has grown
Too heavy for this frame alone.
I know the grave has sealed its claim,
I know these eyes won't see you here;
But reason cannot quiet love,
Nor silence longing year by year.
There are no words to mend this wound,
No hand of mine can make it cease;
For every breath still whispers, "Mom..."
Then breaks beneath the weight of grief.
Yet through the valley, dark and deep,
Where every memory cuts anew,
A wounded Saviour walks with me—
He knows what broken hearts pass through.
So though this pain may haunt my days,
Until the final trumpet's call,
I'll trust the Christ who conquered death
To hold my heart when it must fall.
And when He wipes these tears away,
Where death and parting are no more,
The child who only wanted Mom
Will run to Heaven's golden shore.
There, by God's grace—not grief—I’ll stand,
And what my heart could not release
Will finally be made whole again...
In Christ, at last, I'll know true peace.
________________________________________________________________________________
The Evolution of Grief
There is a strange place grief takes us—a place where the mind and the heart become strangers.
The mind understands facts.
The heart speaks another language.
When my mother passed away, I quickly learned that those two parts of me were no longer walking together.
My mind knew what had happened. I stood at the funeral. I saw the casket lowered into the ground. I watched family members cry. I heard the final prayers. I knew, beyond any doubt, that my mother was no longer here.
Yet my heart refused to believe what my eyes had witnessed.
The First Thought
The poem began with a simple question.
How long is this going to hurt?
Not emotionally.
Physically.
No one prepared me for that part.
People tell you grief is sadness.
They tell you you'll cry.
They tell you time heals.
What they rarely tell you is that grief settles into your body. It becomes a weight in your chest. It steals your breath. It tightens your throat. Some mornings you wake up exhausted before your feet ever touch the floor because your heart has been carrying something your muscles were never designed to hold.
That became the first image.
"This grief has a pulse."
Because that's exactly what it feels like.
It is alive.
It wakes with you.
It follows you.
It never seems to sleep.
Then Came the Child
The more I reflected, the more I realized something else.
The pain wasn't just the loss of a mother.
It was the return of a child.
No matter how old we become, there is still a little boy or little girl inside of us who believes Mom can make everything better.
A scraped knee.
A broken heart.
A bad day.
Fear.
Loneliness.
Confusion.
She couldn't always fix the problem.
But somehow, simply knowing she was there made the world feel less frightening.
When she dies...
That child has nowhere to run.
That realization became another line.
"The child within still calls your name..."
I may have gray hair.
I am growing older
I have become a grandfather.
But grief strips away every title.
Underneath it all is simply...
A son.
The Battle Between Mind and Heart
Then came the deepest realization.
The mind accepts reality long before the heart ever does.
Reason says,
"She's gone."
The heart answers,
"Go call Mom."
You walk into a store and instinctively think,
"Mom would love this."
You reach for the phone.
Then reality catches you.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Grief is not forgetting.
It is remembering...
Over and over.
Why the Poem Became Darker
As the poem evolved, I intentionally allowed it to become darker.
Not because grief has no hope.
But because honesty requires darkness before dawn.
Too often we rush hurting people toward healing.
We say,
"She's in a better place."
"At least she isn't suffering."
"You'll be okay."
Those statements may be true.
But they are rarely what a grieving heart needs first.
Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is simply sit inside the darkness long enough to acknowledge that it exists.
The Psalms do this beautifully.
David questioned.
Jeremiah questioned.
Job questioned.
Even Jesus, hanging on the cross, cried,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Faith does not erase sorrow.
Faith gives sorrow somewhere to rest.
Why Christ Appears at the End
I intentionally waited until the end of the poem to speak of Christ.
Not because He arrives late.
But because many of us do.
When grief first crashes into us, our prayers often aren't eloquent.
Sometimes they are only one word.
"Help."
Jesus never rebuked those prayers.
He answered them.
Christ does not ask us to pretend the pain isn't real.
He steps into it.
He became acquainted with grief.
He stood outside the tomb of Lazarus and wept, even though He knew resurrection was moments away.
That tells me something profound.
Knowing Heaven exists does not make earthly loss painless.
Love still mourns.
Putting It All Together
The poem ultimately became more than a poem about losing my mother.
It became a poem about what grief truly is.
Grief has a heartbeat.
It lives in the body.
It awakens the child hidden beneath adulthood.
It creates a battle between reason and longing.
It teaches us that love does not simply disappear because someone has.
And finally...
It reminds us why we need Christ.
Because there comes a point where the mind has no more answers.
Friends run out of comforting words.
Time cannot repair what death has taken.
Only the One who defeated death Himself can carry a heart that has been broken by it.
One day, Christ will wipe away every tear.
Until then, grief may still have a pulse.
But it will never have the final word.
Death may separate us for a season, but because of Christ, it cannot separate us forever.
And perhaps that is where hope is found—not in pretending the ache is gone, but in trusting that the God who sees every tear will one day transform them into joy.
Until that day, I will keep walking.
Some days with steady steps.
Some days barely able to move.
But never alone.
For the Saviour who conquered the grave walks beside those whose hearts still whisper one simple word—
"Mom."
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