The Sweetest Mother's Day Gift!

We Won’t Conquer Grief, But We Will Learn to Live With it

3 Minute Read

By Chelsea Ohlemiller

Mother holds her toddler son with sun flare in background — Martynovych Roman/Shutterstock.com

The second day of summer break started out as a typical day. Sunny skies, which meant a walk around the neighborhood.

Usually, these walks involve endless laughs and silliness. I push the stroller and the kids race past me on their scooters.

But this day was different. This day’s walk started with, “Mom, can I ask you a question?!”

Usually, the questions involve inquiries about ice cream, trips to the park, or play dates with friends.

Not today.

This day I was met with, “Mom, why do we have to die and go to Heaven? Why can’t we just all live down here together forever?”

I wasn’t prepared for the question and my answer was simple and unplanned. “It’s part of life, buddy. It’s the way God made things.”

My son asks a lot of questions now that my mother is gone. They always come when I least expect them and they usually knock the wind right out of me.

They are small glimmers into his grief. They are reminders that no matter how much fun I think he is having, he misses her. Always. They are reminders that although nearly two years have passed, he is just as confused and heartbroken as the day she left us.

We share that confusion and heartbreak.

I will always welcome their questions. Even when I am unprepared. Even when they hurt. Even when they knock the wind out of me.

Kids are resilient, but they also know pain. They grieve differently than adults do, but they grieve. They hurt. They miss. They wonder.

I hope I always welcome their questions and their grief journey. I hope I always take the time to acknowledge their place in this loss and the ones to come.

I’m not sure my answer was the correct one, but I’m sure that I met his question with love and listening ears. I’ll probably mess up the answers to a million more questions, but I’ll always acknowledge that the absence of someone he loves has changed him. Just as it’s changed me.

We are different now. A piece of our heart is missing.

We won’t conquer grief, but we will learn to live with it.

We will exchange the hurt for healing.

We will remember that the reason we ache is because we loved so beautifully.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog

You may also like:

This is Grief

What it’s Like to Love a Motherless Daughter

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

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!

death death of a parent Grief grieving how a child grieves i miss my mom loss loss of grandparent motherless

Chelsea Ohlemiller

Chelsea Ohlemiller is well-known for her blog, Happiness, Hope and Harsh Realities. She has written for multiple platforms such as Her View from Home, Love What Matters, and Scary Mommy. She has had essays featured in two Chicken Soup for the Soul collections, as well as the national bestseller So God Made a Mother. Her first book is available now, "Now That She's Gone". She lives in Indianapolis with her husband and three children. Website: www.hopeandharshrealities.com Instagram Handle: hopeandharshrealities Facebook: @hopeandharshrealities

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

Memories of My Grandma Live On

In: Grief

Be intentional. Take the picture. Create memories. Because even when we think we have all the time in the world, one day it will slip away. Sadly, this is exactly what happened to my grandma and me. While I was growing up, my dad and his parents had a strained relationship, and they were estranged for about the first five years of my life. Thankfully, they reconciled, and my grandparents and I finally had the opportunity to establish a much-anticipated relationship. Though I was never able to form the same closeness with them as I had with my maternal grandparents,...

Keep Reading

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

In: Grief, Motherhood

Girl's bedroom with posters on the wall and toys on the bed

It was a Sunday evening. I was alone, scrolling through Netflix, searching for something, anything, to fill the quiet. Then I stumbled upon a documentary I had no clue existed, called All the Empty Rooms. After reading the description, my heart immediately went out to all the parents who contributed to this film, and to the man behind it, Steve Hartman, whose compassionate heart radiates in every frame. One statement he said hit me like a freight train: “What we need to talk about is the child that’s not here anymore.” Period. Powerful truth. Curiously, I started watching. Then I...

Keep Reading

Kids Don't Need a Problem-Free Childhood, They Need Love

Kids

Kids Don't Need a Problem-Free Childhood, They Need Love

Breastfeeding Bonds a Mother to More Than Just Her Baby

Baby

We Won’t Conquer Grief, But We Will Learn to Live With it

My son asks a lot of questions now that my mother is gone. They always come when I least expect them and they usually knock the wind right out of me.

Kids are resilient, but they also know pain. They grieve differently than adults do, but they grieve. They hurt. They miss. They wonder.

We won’t conquer grief, but we will learn to live with it.

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

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

Memories of My Grandma Live On

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like