Grief Doesn't Have An Expiration Date

A Gift for Mom! 🤍

This photo was not taken days, weeks or months after my son died. It wasn’t taken within the first year after his death.

It was taken today. Over 2.5 years later.

This is grief.

It doesn’t expire or come with an end date. It cuts through your heart and seeps to the deepest spaces where it will reside for a lifetime.

Holding your child’s lifeless body one last time . . . your brain trying to process the unimaginable while your heart is trying to memorize every detail of their face, their hands, their scent. This moment will never be erased from the memory. This is an image carried forever. It shows up unexpectedly and unannounced. Year, after year, after year.

We all have what we call “our season”. For those who have never experienced losing a child, their season is a favorite time of year because it’s their choice weather, carries their interest of activities, they enjoy the smell in the air, or look forward to a special holiday.

When a child loss parent mentions their “season” it is much different.

Our season does not make us excited. It is something we dread instead of look forward to. It is a time period we want to skip. Put us in a coma and wake us when it’s over. Our season comes with onset anxiety and PTSD. The smells and temperature of our season remind us of birthdays that will never happen, the memories of our sweet angels when they were with us on earth and the worst day of our lives.

During our season it takes everything out of us to keep going. We are emotionally exhausted. We are distant to everyone in our lives. We do not always respond to texts, emails or answer calls because it’s too much right now. We stay in more, declining invites we would normally say yes to. We don’t have the energy to fake the smile and pretend life is great. We are forgetful and unreliable.

Our season is full of broken dreams and questions we will never have the answers to. The what ifs, what would they look like, what would they be doing now.

Each year we have hope the next one will be easier. But it isn’t. It’s always the same, it’s always hard.

When our season passes a weight is lifted and we catch our breath thankful it is over. Shocked we survived once again.

If you know someone going through this be patient and kind. Expect nothing from them. If they cancel plans at the last minute do not be angry with them. Don’t take their actions (or lack of actions) personally. It‘s not you. They are using every ounce of strength they have to find their way through the darkness and back to the light. This is exhausting and they don’t have the energy for anything else.

My season begins very soon. You could say I am in the pre-season phase . . . I feel it coming. Almost a month away from what would have been a third birthday. Thinking about it knocked me to my knees today, the anxiety suffocating.

But there is a difference between this year and last year, and the one before. This time I know it’s not going to be easier. This year I am accepting it and not fighting it. I know what’s coming. I know what it does to me. I have learned and understand what my limitations are during this timeframe of my life.

I am going to stand still allowing it to hit with full force, a tidal wave crashing into me. As I lose my balance I will fall. I‘ll let the wave of grief wash over every inch of my body and hold my breath until it’s over.

When it has passed I will rise.

I‘ll stare at the sun setting in the horizon and remind myself it hurts this much because you love him so much. I wouldn’t trade that love for anything. Not even to take away this pain.

This post originally appeared on Spaces Between You

You may also like:

This is Grief

You Cannot Control Seasons of Grief; You Can Only Move Through Them

To the Moms and Dads Who Suffer Loss: You Are Not Alone

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Elisha Palmer

Elisha Palmer is the mother of four; 3 children on earth, 1 in Heaven. Her third child, Knox Owen, a perfectly healthy and happy baby took a nap at daycare and never woke up at just 3.5 months old. His death ruled as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). As her and her husband entered their new reality as child loss parents they were broken but also knew there was something they needed to do to help other families. They began the foundation, Knox Blocks Foundation, to provide families with Owlet Smart Socks, a device that tracks infants heart rate and oxygen levels while they sleep, alerting parents if something is abnormal. Elisha, a former freelance writer began her blog, Spaces Between You, as an outlet and way to process her grief. Many loss parents have found comfort in her words and relate to the raw truth she tells of what living through child loss is like. She continues to stumble through this journey, finding the light through the cracks, with her husband Mark, son Hunter, daughter Gracen and rainbow baby Maverick by her side.

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

In: Grief

Woman with mother smiling in older photo

Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I see a strong resemblance to my mother. People always said I looked like her, but I never really saw it until now. I think it may be because you always think of your parents as being older than you are. At the age of 61, I am now only two years away from the age my mother was when she died. The only good thing about dying young is that everyone will remember you that way. I have only known my mom as the vibrant, personable, and active woman she was. Well,...

Keep Reading

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Editor’s note: This post discusses child loss Child loss changes Mother’s Day. My 19-month-old, Julia, died suddenly on Mother’s Day in 2024. Three months later, her autopsy revealed she had B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL, also known as SUDNIC). Julia died a week after we did an embryo transfer at an IVF clinic in an attempt to have a second child. We found out three days after Julia’s death that the embryo did not make it either. Six months later, we did another embryo transfer that succeeded, and I now have an 8-month-old daughter, Lucy Mei (“Mei Mei” means “little...

Keep Reading

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

You Are the Last Great Love of Our Lives

Motherhood

You Are the Last Great Love of Our Lives

Postpartum Anxiety Could Have Been My Undoing, But God Made it My Redoing

Faith

Grief Doesn’t Have An Expiration Date

This is grief.

When a child loss parent mentions their “season” it is much different.

Each year we have hope the next one will be easier. But it isn’t. It’s always the same, it’s always hard.

When it has passed I will rise.

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Elisha Palmer

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

Grief Doesn’t Have An Expiration Date

This is grief.

When a child loss parent mentions their “season” it is much different.

Each year we have hope the next one will be easier. But it isn’t. It’s always the same, it’s always hard.

When it has passed I will rise.

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like