The Quiet Ache of Moving Forward

For me, watching other senior moms mourn the loss of their “last baby” graduating gives me pause. Part of me feels their sadness deeply. I know every mother feels the ache of watching her child grow up and move into the next chapter. But another part of me quietly envies that pain, because I would give anything to have those problems.

I wish I still had my sweet girl here for this season of life. I wish I were helping her pick out graduation announcements, taking pictures, planning dorm rooms, crying over her leaving for college. Instead I’m grieving the fact that Rylee never got the chance.

And then there’s my living daughter, carrying a weight no sister should ever have to carry. She tells me she feels guilty for being alive. Guilty for graduating, guilty for walking across that stage when Rylee can’t. She says it feels like she’s betraying her sister by moving forward.

As a mother, how do you answer that? How do you tell your child it’s okay to live when part of your own heart died too?

Of course I tell her the things I know are true. That Rylee would want this for her, that she would be cheering the loudest, that she will always walk beside her in spirit. And I believe those things with everything in me. But if I’m being completely honest, none of those words takes away the truth that all we really want is our daughter back.

Losing Rylee has changed me in enormous ways. Things I once thought were important now seem so small. The things I used to stress over, appearances, comparisons, keeping up with everyone else, they feel meaningless now. Grief strips life down to what is real.

After losing Rylee, I see people differently now. I see the pain they carry, the ways they try to cover it up. I can almost feel it without them even saying a word. Sometimes it feels like grief has given me a strange superpower, the ability to read what people are really feeling beneath the surface.

When you lose someone you love so deeply, you become painfully aware of the world around you. You notice motives. You see through people in ways you never did before. It’s as if grief removes a filter you didn’t even know existed. Suddenly you see people for who they truly are. Not necessarily because they changed, but because you did.

This whole process of grief and losing a child is devastating. There truly are no words for it. But then you add running the Rylee Grace Foundation into the middle of that grief.

For me, it’s something I have to do. It gives me strength every single day, because I know Rylee is right beside me. I know this work would bring her so much joy. The wishes, the smiles, the laughter, all the love we can pour into families walking through the unimaginable.

Being able to help pay for Child Life services for a family in treatment, supporting a grieving mom, helping siblings who are watching cancer steal the energy and hair and childhood from their brother or sister, it is beyond rewarding. To step into someone’s darkest season and lighten the weight, even a little, matters more than I can explain.

But the hardest part is when we lose one of the children we are helping.

When another family has to say goodbye to their child because of cancer, it rips everything back open again. It honestly baffles me how these amazing kids keep getting taken away. I will never understand it. These children are extraordinary, full of light and strength, and yet cancer keeps stealing them from the people who love them most.

I’m grateful I have the strength to show up for families facing fresh loss. But I’ve also learned I have to protect myself, too. Every loss affects me deeply, and every one brings back reminders of losing Rylee. I’ve had to learn boundaries. Not because I’m becoming cold, but because I have to survive this, too.

I can feel myself building a harder shell at times, not in a mean way, but in a protective way. Otherwise, what good am I to my own family? To my own life? We did not ask for Rylee to be taken away. No family asks for this kind of pain.

One of the biggest lessons grief taught me was seeing who truly climbs down into the hole with you.

When loss happens, you hope your family and friends will be there. You hope that instead of standing at the top, tossing down advice or shallow words, they actually climb down the ladder and sit in the darkness with you.

I learned very quickly after losing Rylee who was willing to climb down that ladder.

Thankfully, many people did. But some did not, including some family. And because of that, choices have to be made. I choose to surround myself with the people who show up, the people who stay, the ones willing to sit in sorrow beside me. Because I know without question I would do the same for them.

Boundaries become necessary after loss. You learn very quickly who is truly in your corner and who is not.

So during May, during graduations and Mother’s Day and all the holidays and celebrations, be extra aware of the people around you. Some are grieving deeply while trying to smile through it. A graduation may remind someone of the child who never got theirs. Mother’s Day may ache because someone’s mom is gone. And a holiday can shine a spotlight on the empty chair no one talks about.

Please remember to climb down the ladder.

Don’t just acknowledge someone’s pain from a distance. Sit with them in it. That kind of love matters more than you will ever know.