The Grief I Buried With Them

A mother’s love, a mother’s pain

To carry life, then lose again

Twins in my womb, two precious girls

But fate had other plans unfurls

I hid the truth, I lied in fear

Of losing love, of losing cheer

But pain and sorrow, they came to stay

And I drank my problems all away

Placental abruption, endometriosis

A survey of the heart’s prognosis

How different would life be today

If my body hadn’t turned away

But still I carry their love within

Two angels lost, but not forgotten

I hold them close, in tears and prayer

And hope for peace beyond despair

For the love of a mother never fades

Through heartache and the darkest shades

I dream of the day we’ll meet again

My precious twins, my eternal friends

A mother’s love holds no timeline. And neither does a mother’s grief.

Almost twenty years ago, I carried twin girls beneath my heart—two lives full of promise, growing within me. But fate had other plans. A placental abruption changed everything. I delivered them alone in an ER, terrified and silent. I didn’t tell anyone. Not even their father. I lied, afraid of being left, abandoned, unloved. And so I bore the loss in secret, the weight of it swallowing me whole.

I came home that night shattered. Angry. Cold. Distant. I was a shell of myself, drowning in pain and alcohol, numbing what I couldn’t bring myself to speak aloud. I buried my daughters—nameless to the world but never to me—in a shared plot in Mad

ison. A place for babies who never came home. A place I’ve never visited, though I carry them with me always.

Later, doctors would tell me I had endometriosis. That I would need a hysterectomy. That motherhood, at least in the biological sense, was over for me. But no one warned me about the ghosts. The dreams. The lingering “what ifs” that surface on days like today, years later, when the world feels quiet and I can hear the echo of what was lost.

Their lives were short, but their impact was forever. I may not have held them for long, but I loved them with everything I had. And I still do. I talk to them in prayers, cry for them in silence, and wonder who they might’ve been. Sisters. Artists. Dancers. Dreamers. Almost 20 by now.

Maybe the grief I’ve carried all these years is why I stayed stuck on their father, long after he was gone from my life. Maybe my heart never left that hospital room.

I don’t write this for pity. I write this because silence didn’t save me—and maybe, it’s not meant to. Maybe healing starts with breaking the silence, even if it’s messy, even if it ruins a Saturday.

So today, I honor them. My girls. My angels. The love that never got to grow, but still exists.

And I remind myself, in tears, that a mother’s love never fades. Not even in the dark.