Beyond Forgetting: Your Child Lives

Do not be afraid

that you will lose your child again.

It is true, they go somewhere beyond our sight.

Memory cannot follow,

But you are here.

You are the field

where your child walked.

The impression of their steps is not a record, but a change within the ground itself—

The way water changes stone

not by force

but by timeless belonging.

What you fear losing

was never stored

It was received

the way the earth receives rain;

taken in,

made part of you,

becoming the very thing

that still grows and rises in you.

There is a kind of knowing.

older than remembering.

Before your mind can reach

for what it thinks it holds,

Your hands already know.

The weight of your own child.

Your body keeps

What your heart embraced.

The soul does not forget.

in the way we fear forgetting.

Sudden and absolute—like a door swinging shut.

It forgets the way dusk forgets the sun,

Which is not really forgetting at all.

It only slowly becomes

a different kind of light.

So if, over the years, you cannot recall your child’s face with the precision

That grief demands, remember this: In your own face is every tenderness.

You beheld in that sweet face.

The love that made you

Is the love your child shares with you

And you are walking in the world.

carrying the shape

of everything given.

Your beloved is not growing further from you each year.

Your child is always within you.

the way music

lives in the hands

of someone who has played it

ten thousand times.

The melody is no longer something you learn,

It is simply known.