“If” Is the Heaviest Word I Know

Baltimore just got snow.

Regular people see pretty.

They see days off.

They see pictures.

They see quiet streets and soft white rooftops.

I see a beginning.

Because ten years ago… everything that led to losing Isaiah started with a snowstorm.

Not just snow.

Snow with ice on top.

That thin, slick layer that looks harmless until you step on it.

That quiet danger.

That deceptive beauty.

The kind of surface that doesn’t look like it’s about to change your life.

And here we are again.

Snow outside my window. Ice warning underneath.The same sky color. The same stillness in the air.

And my body knows before my mind wants to admit it.

Because grief like this doesn’t live in memory alone.

It lives in muscle. In nerves. In breath.

And my body is tired.

My back aches like I’ve been carrying something heavy for years — and I guess I have. Grief has weight. It sits in your shoulders. It curls in your spine. It tightens your chest like a fist that never fully opens.

My eyes burn, not just from crying in moments, but from the way tears come in waves when memory won’t let you rest. That swollen, raw feeling like your body is leaking something it can’t hold anymore.

Sleep doesn’t come easy when memory is louder than silence.

I’ve been trying to sleep my grief off like rest is medicine for loss, like maybe if I shut down long enough, my heart won’t replay what the snow means to me. Like exhaustion might knock the “ifs” out of my head.

But grief doesn’t sleep.

Grief sits at the edge of your bed. Grief stands at the window and watches the weather with you. Grief waits for the house to get quiet so it can get loud.

I’ve been sitting at my desk at home with coloring books, paint, watercolor markers, empty canvas, like I’m trying to keep my hands busy enough that my mind won’t wander out the window. My eyes won't look out the window. My heart won't bleed out the window.

Like if I fill in enough shapes with soft colors, maybe I won’t notice the white outside.

Like if I focus hard enough on staying “calm,” maybe my heart won’t start racing the way it does when snow falls.

But the truth?

I am not calm.

I am trying to survive a memory my body still thinks is happening.

Because snow used to be peaceful to me.

I used to love the sound of it.

That soft tapping. That gentle hush. That quiet way it covers everything like a blanket.

It used to sound like needles landing on a desk — tiny, delicate, harmless.

I used to find comfort in that sound. It felt like the world slowing down, like permission to rest, like stillness.

Now?

Now it sounds like tears.

Like the sky is crying the way I did. Like every flake is a drop of something I never finished grieving. Like the air itself remembers.

And when it gets quiet enough, I swear the snow sounds like sobbing. Like the kind you try to swallow so nobody hears you. Like grief falling softly but endlessly.

Because when grief attaches itself to weather… you can’t close the door on it.

You can’t avoid the season. You can’t mute the sky.

You just sit there with the window, and the memory, and the word that has haunted me for ten years:

If.

A near and dear friend said to me (while talking me off the ledge of more tears "If - is the biggest word in the dictionary."

If.

But here’s what people don’t understand.

It wasn’t just snow back then.

It was ice on top of snow.

And that’s a different kind of danger.

Snow by itself is honest.It looks like what it is. Cold. Wet. Slippery.

But ice on top of snow?

That’s betrayal.

That’s danger dressed up as beauty.

That’s the ground lying to your feet.

That’s the kind of surface that smiles at you while planning to take you down.

And that’s what that storm was.

I remember how quiet everything looked. How still. How soft.

Like the world had been wrapped in cotton.

But underneath?

Hard.

Slick.

Unforgiving.

The kind of ice you don’t see until you’re already sliding.

The kind that doesn’t give warnings. The kind that doesn’t care how careful you are. The kind that doesn’t care who you are.

And that’s what makes this weather so hard for me now.

Because it reminds me how quickly life can flip from normal to nightmare without asking your permission.

One minute you’re living. The next minute you’re surviving.And you don’t even know when the shift happened.

That’s what ice does.

It removes control.

You step, thinking you know the ground…and suddenly gravity decides your story.

And I think that’s why my body reacts before my mind does.

Because trauma remembers the moment you realized you weren’t in control anymore.

Trauma remembers the second the ground gave way.

Trauma remembers the feeling of your stomach dropping before anything even physically happens.

That’s what this snow brings back.

Not just the loss.

The lead-up.

The quiet.The tension in the air.The sense that something was changing before you could stop it.

Ice looks beautiful until you’re the one slipping on it. And grief looks survivable until you’re the one burying your child.

I wouldn’t wish that moment — the one where the world tilts and never tilts back — on anyone. Because there is no strength that prepares you for that. No faith that makes it painless. No time that makes it fair.

People say, “I don’t know how you do it.”The truth is, you don’t “do” this. You endure it.

And I wouldn’t wish the endurance of burying your own child on anyone walking this earth. It is a pain that doesn’t sit in one place — it moves through your body, your sleep, your memories, your seasons, your weather. It follows you into snowstorms and quiet rooms and ordinary days.

There are some crosses people carry that no one sees.Burying your child is one of them.

And I pray most people never know this weight, never understand this kind of silence, never have to learn how to keep living with a love that has nowhere to go.

And the word still sits there.

If.

If the weather had been different.

If the ice hadn’t settled on top of the snow.

If that day had unfolded another way.

If timing had shifted by even a breath.

If one moment had gone left instead of right.

If.

The word that builds a whole life that never got to happen. The word that lets a mother replay moments she can’t redo. The word that keeps your mind searching for exits in a story that already ended.

And “if” is cruel.

Because “if” doesn’t just ask questions — it builds entire worlds that never existed.

“If” shows me timelines where Isaiah is still here.

“If” lets me see him growing up, getting taller, stepping into the years I never got.

“If” plays movies in my mind at 3 a.m. when the house is quiet and my heart is loud.

“If” convinces you there was a version of this story where your child lived — and then reminds you you’re not in that one.

And the mind will chase those versions until you are exhausted.

Until your body hurts from holding questions that have no answers.

Until your chest feels tight from breathing around a grief that never leaves.

Until sleep feels like something other people get to have.

“If” is the biggest word in the dictionary because it holds all the lives that never happened.

And I carry them all.

And I think about when we laid Isaiah to rest — the sea of people, the tears that wouldn’t stop, the orange bracelets everywhere, and my senior pastor, Dr. Frank Lance, standing there and preaching his eulogy titled “He Got It In.”

And he did.

My baby got it in.

In his short life, he loved without reservation. He laughed with his whole body. He filled rooms bigger than his size. He left fingerprints on hearts that still feel him. Years didn’t measure him — impact did. Love did. Presence did. The way people still say his name with warmth does.

Work hard. Live hard. Play hard.

Those words don’t feel like a slogan. They feel like a testimony.

More days than not, I am tired down to my bones. I am exhausted from carrying memories, from surviving anniversaries, from pretending snow is just weather. I wake up already worn. I move through days with a quiet ache I don’t always have language for.

Sometimes I don’t feel strong — I just feel required.

But I still get up.

Not because I’m brave.

Not because I’m healed.

But because I’m called.

Because his sister — the spitting image of him, the living echo of his smile — deserves a life not ruled by grief. She deserves joy that isn’t filtered through loss. She deserves snow days filled with laughter, not the panic that snow stirs in me. She deserves a mother who can stand at the window and say, “Look how pretty,” even when inside my heart is racing and my mind is spiraling back years.

She doesn’t fully understand what the snow does to me.

So I hold it together.

I bundle her up. I take the pictures.I smile at the flakes falling.

Because motherhood doesn’t end when grief begins.It just becomes holy work.

And maybe that’s the theology I didn’t ask for but now live every day:

That God doesn’t waste love.That lives don’t have to be long to be full.That impact isn’t measured in years, but in imprint.That even loss can carry legacy.

Isaiah got it in.

And now I walk forward carrying what he left in me — a deeper love, a softer heart, a faith that isn’t loud but is stubborn. The kind that limps. The kind that cries. The kind that doesn’t understand, but still shows up.

And some nights, when sleep won’t come, when my body aches and my spirit feels thin, I pray like this — not polished, not churchy, just a mother talking to God through tears:

“Lord… you gave him to me, and you took him home. I don’t understand the timing, but I trust your heart. Hold him the way I can’t. Tell him I still love him. Tell him I still say his name. Give me strength for the days that come heavy, and gentleness for the child still in my arms. Help me live the life in front of me without losing the love behind me. When the snow falls and memory rises, sit with me. When I feel weak, remind me I am still standing. And when my heart breaks again, catch the pieces like you always do.”

Because grief still lives here.

But so does love.

And there are so many “ifs” I carry.

But the one “if” I don’t have to hold is love.

I don’t have to ask if he was loved.

I don’t have to ask if his life mattered.

I don’t have to ask if heaven holds him the way I wish I could.

That part is settled.

So when the snow falls and the memories rise, I stand in the only truth grief can’t take from me:

Love was here.Love is still here.And love doesn’t end.