“A Mother’s Grief, A Son’s Heaven: The Day We Laid Marquay to Rest”.

Today we lay our son Marquay to rest.

And even though the world continues moving with its usual noise and rhythm, my own world feels impossibly quiet, impossibly hollow, impossibly unlike anything I have ever known.

We are going to miss him so much, far more than any words could possibly carry, but there is a small sliver of comfort buried deep inside my chest knowing he is in Heaven, knowing he is held by something gentler than this world ever managed to be.

Grieving is tough, plain and simple, yet nothing about this grief feels simple at all, because the moment a parent buries a child, the universe seems to collapse in on itself and every breath becomes a conscious act of survival.

I know it will take years, maybe even a lifetime, to learn how to live with this kind of hurt, but I refuse to walk around looking defeated and broken, not because it isn’t how I feel, but because I know two things with absolute certainty:

First, Marquay would not want me to surrender to sadness, because even in his smallest moments, he carried a brightness that pushed back against every shadow.

Second, my mother Rose raised me to be strong, quietly strong, fiercely strong, the kind of strong that sits in your bones and lives in your DNA and whispers to you even when everything in your world is falling apart.

So no, I am not going to act like any of this is easy, because it isn’t, and I owe myself the honesty of admitting that.

But I will also admit that what makes grief even harder is when your feelings are not respected, when people expect you to heal on their timeline, when they assume strength looks like silence rather than survival.

I am not a cryer—at least I wasn’t before—but since losing Marquay, I have cried more than I ever thought my body was capable of, and strangely, those tears have become their own kind of release, their own small forgiveness, their own reminder that even the strongest hearts still bleed.

I will never stop grieving my son.

I know that now.

I have lost before—my mother, my brother—and I learned to integrate their absences into my life, learned to carry the ache without letting it crush me, learned to move forward even when a part of me wanted to stay frozen in yesterday.

But this grief is different.

This grief is deeper, sharper, heavier—like an ocean with no shore, like a storm with no end, like a wound that refuses to scar because it came from losing a life I created, a life I carried for nine sacred months, a life that grew beneath my heartbeat.

Losing a child feels like losing a part of your own soul, a part you never imagined could be taken, a part you are certain you cannot live without.

I always said I would never want to start my life over or change anything, because everything—every joy, every mistake, every twist of fate—brought me closer to my babies.

But today, if a miracle stood in front of me and offered me one impossible choice, I would choose to go back to the day I went into labor with Marquay.

I would relive every contraction, every fear, every breath, every whisper, every moment that brought him into this world, because in that version of time, he would still be alive, still laughing, still calling my name, still filling rooms with the kind of light only he could make.

The pain doesn’t fade, not even for a minute, because every morning I open my eyes and realize all over again that he is gone, that this is real, that this nightmare is not a dream the sunrise can chase away.

And some days, that realization crushes me in ways I cannot describe, in ways that make even breathing feel like work.

But I am still trying.

Trying because he deserves a mother who doesn’t let grief turn her into a ghost.

Trying because my other children deserve a mother who still holds on to hope.

Trying because strength is not the absence of pain—it is choosing to stand again after the pain knocks you down.

I hope praying helps, because prayer was the only thing that held me together when I lost my mother, the only thread that kept me from unraveling completely.

I am reaching for that same thread now, hoping it holds, hoping it wraps around the pieces of my heart and gently pulls them back into something that resembles wholeness.

Some days I feel it working, soft and slow, like a balm on a wound too deep to touch.

Some days I feel nothing at all.

But I keep praying anyway.

Because maybe healing is not a sudden light or a dramatic moment of relief—maybe healing is the quiet decision to keep going, breath after breath, step after step, even when everything hurts.

And maybe, just maybe, God hears the prayers of mothers in a different way, in a closer way, in a way that bends Heaven toward Earth so our children never feel far from us.

I don’t know how tomorrow will feel, or the day after that, or the months that will follow.

But I know I will keep trying.

Trying to honor Marquay.

Trying to carry him forward in the stories I tell, in the strength I show, in the love I give, in the life I continue to live even though part of me wishes time would stop.

Well, I hope everyone has a good day.

And I will try.

Not because the pain is gone.

But because love—real, fierce, everlasting love—deserves the effort of trying.