Grieving for Other People’s Children

I am writing this within hours of returning from the ceremony, remembering and praying for the lives of the two boys and their families. My son's classmates. They were two of five teenagers in the car, involved in a tragic accident. The living will never unsee, never forget how they felt in those moments.

My heart—a mother's heart—breaks for those children. It breaks for my son, who is feeling the loss of life too closely. Who now has his first real glimpse of the fragility of human life, and his own mortality. 

I wish to shield them all—all the babies—from the realities of the world. If only that were an option. In Sudan. In Gaza. In Iran. In Chicago. In my own backyard. Pain is everywhere. The enormity of it can become all-consuming. 

But choosing to only mourn when there is proximity is also a falsehood—a betrayal of my own humanity. That same motherly love that I feel for my son's classmates I feel for children I have never seen, will never see. Of course I do. We are connected. We have to be. It is in our own best interest to be. To see the connection, the interconnectedness of our humanity. Your survival and mine intricately tied to one another, in a dance. Your ability to thrive, smile, hope, dream, experience—is my wildest fantasy. 

And so I do what I can. 

I cry. I light candles. I hold my child tighter. I whisper prayers into the spaces where I don’t have words. I resist the temptation to turn away from the grief of strangers, because their pain is not foreign to me. It is familiar. It lives in me, in my bones, in my lineage. As does their potential for joy; our right to it. 

I also recommit. To showing up with softness. With strength. With clarity about what matters most. To build communities where care is the norm and connection is the expectation. Where we don’t wait for loss to wake us up. 

Because the truth is—every moment is precious. Every heartbeat a gift. And we are here, still, with responsibility for each other. To love deeper. To create beauty amid the wreckage. To be the kinds of humans we wish had been there when the worst happened. 

I write this for the boys. The children. For the parents. For all of us. 

May we live in a way that honors their lives. 

May we hold each other a little closer today, because there are no such things as other people’s children.