We’re all the same when we hear our child is gone. Broken people. We can never go back to who we were in those moments before. We lose our child but in some ways worse, we lose ourselves.

The moment my world ended revisits me frequently, even now, seventeen months later. Maybe I’m washing dishes, reading a book, or sitting at the McDonalds drive thru when the shock wave hits: He’s really gone.

Those horrific words wash over me exactly the way they did the first time I heard them from the police officer standing in my doorway, “Benjamin Mahon is deceased.” I didn’t believe it. “No, he’s my only child.” A righteous argument, I believed then and still believe. The universe should have some basic fairness shouldn’t it? But it doesn’t.

I’m still wrangling with the same shock wave that hit me in those first moments. I don’t sink to the floor and press my forehead against cold tile, as I did then, but I still feel the almost irresistible urge to run away. Run anywhere. Be someone else. I can’t be me.

It was in the wee hours of the morning that I learned he was gone. The nervous police officer tried to leave but I said “You can’t leave me.” He asked me if I lived alone. “No, my son lives with me but he’s at his girlfriend’s..” I trailed off, still on the floor with my head pressed to the tile. “Is there anyone I can call?” “Yes, my sister.” She didn’t answer his repeated calls so he left me alone to go knock on her door, three blocks away. I glanced at the .38 sitting mute on my great grandmother’s library table, I had brought it with me to answer the violent knock at the door.

There have been more than a few days since then I wish that I had used it, right in that moment. Before the responsibility of not hurting other human beings made it impossible.

After the policeman left I washed my face, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and took out my kitchen garbage, which resembled art, things carefully stacked so they wouldn’t fall down. I couldn’t have people see my trash can looking like that. How did I function in those moments my entire world was shattering into a gazillion pieces? The books say I was in a state of shock. When we’re faced with extreme trauma, we don’t absorb it, we continue moving and functioning in some throwback to caveman times when to stop functioning meant you couldn’t outrun the beast behind you. So I functioned for an hour or more before blessed amnesia took over.

For me, emptying the trash was all I could think to do. Then I sat down on my couch and waited for my sister.

It was only moments when she arrived with her husband, Perry, followed by my parents not long after. And that’s where my memory ends for three days. I have small snippets, a conversation. The sound of my own wailing in my ears. Questions. “Do you want to cremate him?” “My child? Do I want to cremate my child?” More wailing and the odd sensation of not really being present. My beloved was gone and so was I.

My memory picks up sharply about day three. I stumbled through decisions. Yes, I would cremate him. Choosing a mango-wood urn. I could not have a funeral because of the Covid pandemic lockdown. There would be no mounds of flowers, no mourners honoring him. I was both horrified and relieved. Relieved that I wouldn’t have to face people and pretend that I would ever be okay again. Pretend I didn’t want to die right along with him. Pretend their words made sense to me. I didn’t realize not having a funeral would not relieve me of those responsibilities. I’m still pretending.

I call it “wearing the mask” and it’s a common phrase among bereaved parents. When I’m around people I feel pressure to respond in normal ways, make small talk, interact, because that’s what we are expected to do. But I am no longer a functioning human being. My mind is not on the things of today. I find “normal” talk tiring and unhelpful. It’s a distraction from where my mind dwells, with him. It’s easier with one person because I can stay somewhat with him and also follow a conversation. But in larger groups I cannot keep up. I give up and drift away. Retreating to the overwhelming problem that consumes my mind every moment of the day. “How do I go on?”

If you’re reading this you understand what I mean. For seventeen months my brain has been trying to make sense of what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and what happens now. I believe I use about 80% of my brain power every moment of every day subconsciously trying to come to grips with what has happened. The other 20% I’m free to use for things such as choosing clothes, working, reading, writing, conversation. Sometimes in large groups I get the urge to scream “Be quiet! I’m busy trying to think here!” Everything besides my grief is just noise.

We went through a contentious election six months after Ben died and I didn’t care, didn’t vote. I was politically concerned and active most of my life but it just didn’t make sense to me any more. People shouting at each other. Unaware that in a single instant what really matters can cease to exist in your world.

It’s almost like I exist in another dimension. I’m aware of this earthly dimension and participate in it when I have to, but I don’t really inhabit it. I inhabit another dimension entirely alone. It’s a very lonely feeling. I tried explaining it to a friend “I feel like I’m on one side of a vast river. I can see and hear all of you over there, but I can’t reach you. I walk alone on the other side of the river.”

That feeling began almost immediately after he died and has never gone away. And that’s where my grief group has helped. I’m in a small group of other parents who have also lost all of their children or their only child. We meet on zoom once weekly for two hours. I call them “The Onlies.” They walk the other dimension with me for a brief time. They know what I know. They suffer what I suffer. They understand the chaos of losing your only child that no human being who hasn’t experienced it can ever understand. It’s not only physical and emotional pain, there’s also loss of self. Loss of identity. Loss of past. Loss of future. Loss of present. Loss of hope. Loss of dreams. Loss of faith. (for some) Existing without those things other people take for granted is what makes me feel like I inhabit another dimension. The “issues” of present life, such as elections or my friend’s latest fight with her husband, cease to have meaning in the face of my daily struggle to overcome those losses.

Which leads me to the next loss, friends and family. Bereaved parents call this a secondary loss. My sister was my best friend. We were in daily contact, lived three blocks from each other, and still wrote hours-long emails back and forth daily. When Ben died she was there within minutes, holding me, loving, and soothing. She spent every minute with me twenty four hours a day. For exactly two weeks. That day she said “We have to go home now.” I cried but understood. People’s lives go on even if mine has stopped. It never occurred to me that she would stop writing our daily emails, would stop calling, would just fall of the face of the earth, but that’s what she did. And when I wrote to her “I miss you! I miss you! I miss you!” I got an email in return saying “You don’t miss me, you’re angry with me.” It’s true, I was. Why did she disappear? Only she and God know the answer to that. I lost my son, my best friend & sister all in a two week period.

We speak now, we even write. But she would have been my phone call in moments where I was sure I couldn’t take another breath. I lost that when I needed it most. And to find a new best friend in the middle of grief is impossible.

I’ve found out since that I’m not unique in this experience. Nearly ever bereaved parent has a friend or family member who couldn’t or didn’t step up.

On the flip side of that, other relationships flourished and grew unexpectedly. Just as there are people who can’t deal with grief for a multitude of reasons, there are some amazing people who can. My young niece, Jeorgia, whom I have always loved, but wasn’t emotionally close to, stepped up and became my daily companion for months. She knew how to listen, how to cry with me, how to laugh with me, and I treasure her. Love those people who try to love you. Say yes to those who offer you support. They are the very best people in the world, because this grief journey is miserable for all who come near it.

My mother and father became my primary support system and still are. My mother makes sure I’m fed, cooking me wonderful southern comfort food, one of the few things I’ve learned to take pleasure in again. She checks on me several times a day. Many days she takes an hour or as many hours as it takes and sits with me and listens, which is really the only skill needed to deal with a person in grief. She’s trying to love me back to life and I’m trying hard to respond.

I can’t tell her I’m jealous that she has four healthy children, a large number of grandchildren and even great grandchildren. I will never have the life she has. The rest of my life will be very different from hers.

But it’s not just her I’m jealous of. I wept angry tears in the wal-Mart parking lot last week. I was there alone. Every car that pulled up had happy families tumbling out. They walked across the parking lot chatting with each other. Children tugging against parental hands. Many looked unable to afford diapers but I would gladly have traded places with one of them. None would trade places with me. I was there in my own dimension, hands gripping the steering wheel, snot and tears mingling down my face.

BREAK — tie with previous. —The hours after I heard the worst news a human being can ever hear replay themselves over and over and over again in my mind. I have to actively push against them or I think they would just stay on a never ending loop 24 hours a day. Interrupted only by what I’ve come to call the “What If Game” and its close cousin, the “I Should Have Game.”

I’ve come to know many bereaved parents over the past year and I haven’t met one who doesn’t suffer these thoughts. It doesn’t matter how their child died, the thoughts are relentless and excruciating. Psychological warfare administered by our own minds against ourselves. But being cognizant of that fact doesn’t make me immune. I play the games too. It’s completely involuntary. I tried to describe it to my mother one day, “It feels like my brain is eating itself.”

Not content to suffer the extreme physical pain of missing my child, my mind works very hard to take the blame for his death. It’s a cruel but apparently common natural reaction. My son’s death certificate says he died of Pneumonia. He died April 19th, 2020, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in Florida. A perfectly healthy 27 year old man. We were both sick with flu and bronchitis symptoms, and visited our doctor asking to be tested for Covid but we were unable to get tested because there were no tests available. Three weeks later he died in his sleep after having trouble breathing the night before. The medical examiner first said cardiac arrest, but after the autopsy changed it to Pneumonia. I can’t know for certain but believe it was Covid.

I was a single mom for much of Ben’s childhood and young adulthood. His father and I divorced when he was two years old. When he died, his stepfather and I had been separated for eight years, he lives in Canada.

So Ben and I were very close. He moved out a couple of times, once to live with friends for college, and once to live with a girlfriend, but neither lasted long and he moved back home. Which suited me, he was a very pleasant and easy-going young man with a ready smile and a fondness for puns and dad jokes. He was a pleasure to live with. I cook a lot and nobody enjoyed my cooking more than him. He loved to eat so he never complained about dish duty after I cooked. We were best friends and roommates. I miss him every single day. He texted me on average 102 times a day, from work, from his girlfriend’s house, and sometimes from his bedroom “Mom! Go check out this site, you’ll love it!” We also played video games together.

His friend Cory said at his memorial service, “Miss Bev was a unicorn! A mama who fed me every night and then played video games with us!”

I enjoyed him so much. And he wasn’t a perfect child, he drifted for a few years, unsure of who he was or what he wanted out of life. He battled an episodic alcohol addiction, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but always trying. But before he died he seemed to have found his footing. He was working in his grandfather’s produce brokerage business and found his niche. He loved it and was good at it. He had a three year old son whom he loved dearly and shared custody with his mother.

My world came crashing down when he died. The word I use most was shattered.