My son Elijah died on a Wednesday morning in March. He was 8. He had been fighting leukemia for 14 months, and we had believed, with everything in us, that he would win.
After he died, I functioned. That's the only word for it. I went through the motions of being a person — I got up, I ate, I answered calls, I nodded at things people said to me about time and healing and plans. Inside I was a hollow shell.
People kept telling me grief had stages. That I would move through them. That eventually I would feel better. I stopped talking to those people. You don't move through the grief of losing your child. You build your life around it. That's not moving through. That's something else entirely.
One evening, seven months after Elijah died, I was cleaning out a closet and found a box of oil paints. I had bought them ten years ago for a class I never took. I sat on the floor and opened one and smelled it. Elijah used to steal my pens and draw on everything — on paper bags, on receipts, on the backs of his hands. His drawings are still taped to the refrigerator. I haven't moved them.
I painted until 4am that night. I didn't sleep. I painted Elijah from memory — the gap in his teeth, the way he slept with one arm over his face, the exact shade of the blue sweater he wore to his last birthday party. I painted until my hands hurt and then I painted more.
I still paint every day. Elijah lives in every canvas. Grief has not gone away — gr