What is the right way to begin this blog? Other than explaining the meaning behind its name, which we do in the About page, perhaps it is best to start by explaining why we would do this. Why write about the loss of our child? And even if we write about it, why publicly share something so personal?

When you lose a child, you experience several responses. You cry, a lot. You scream. You shake your fists. You sit in silence. You listen to reflective music. Eventually, you pray and read your Bible. And, at least for us, you also write.

You write because there are thoughts that need to be expressed which you cannot bring yourself to verbalize to anyone else, either because they are too dark or painful or meandering or because they don’t make any sense until they are loosened from your mind and expressed on a page.

Such thoughts are deeply personal. But often when we have “compared notes,” we find that we are thinking much the same things, though of course expressed in our own voices. And when you start reading what others have written about their losses, like Nicholas Wolterstorff in Lament For A Son or C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed (works we highly recommend), you discover that they share some similar thoughts and experiences.

There is a kind solace in this discovery about grief. That you are not alone in your devastation. That it is okay to question everything. That though it feels like your world is ending, you are not crazy.

Yet, even with the similarities, each voice is unique. Each expression contains a different emphasis. Nothing is really repeated. And of course this should be expected because no two losses are exactly alike. We lost the same person, but my wife and I experience that loss in our own ways just as much as we share in that darkness.

So, one reason we have chosen to open this space is because our experiences and thoughts might help someone else who has the profound misfortune of facing such a loss. Perhaps one of our voices will speak to someone in a way that will provide them even a sliver of solace. If that happens, the surrender of privacy is worth it.

But the other reason to do this is that our son Ethan, even as short as his life was, deserves to be remembered. Some people seek to continue a person’s legacy through a charity fundraiser or a monument or a foundation. We are not geared in those ways. But we can write, and doing so in a public forum, no matter how small, inscribes Ethan’s name and his memory in one more place here with us until the day we see him again.