The hardest physical sensation was the one without a name. It was the thing I felt when I woke up in the morning and my son wasn’t crying. It was the feeling in my arms when they curled around the teddy bear from the hospital, but still felt empty. It was the physical feeling of absence. It felt so heavy.

When Adrian died, I again reexamined my beliefs….I realized that even in the face of the finality of his death, these ceremonies still didn’t resonate with me.

Before Adrian died, I didn’t understand suicide. I didn’t understand what could cause someone to want to end their life. After he died, I realized how much was missing in that conversation — it wasn’t that I wanted to kill myself; it was that I felt as if the important parts of me had already died.