When the Cradle Stays Empty

I was holding her. Her breath was faint against my chest, a fragile rise and fall I clung to like a prayer. And then… she breathed her last.

It happened quietly, without warning. No dramatic cry, no tearful scene. Just a gentle letting go, as if she was slipping into a dream I could not follow.

I never blamed myself. I have been taught, that life and death are not ours to command. I never blamed God. I know He prepared a good place for her; a home of peace beyond my understanding.

So I say to myself, She is still here. Even when the truth of the empty cradle hits me with its full weight. Even when silence in that room screams louder than any words.

When I can no longer shield myself, I say she is with her dad. That brings me comfort. It keeps the grief from swallowing me whole. It lets me hold on to her presence in some way, even if the cradle beside me stays forever empty.

I hate missing her. It cripples me. I was raised to hate weakness. So I hit the gym. I throw myself into every rep, every drop of sweat, and every moment of exertion. I bitch around. I turn anger into strength. I tell myself sadness is weakness, and strength is resistance.

Grief is strange. It does not pass neatly, nor follow the neat stages people speak of. Mine became conscious denial. A choice. Not because I wished to erase her memory, but because speaking the truth aloud would shatter me. I chose to carry her quietly, in a cradle no one else could see.

And then there was him, the man who put dying flesh inside me. I had walked away from him long before she took her last breath, but his shadow stayed. I hold him now in my mind only as a name and a wound. His memory is nothing but death. He is the grim reaper I would rather pluck my eyes than gaze upon. I do not wish to turn my grief into his possession. I walk away. Always away. Away.

Walking away was not weakness. It was the fiercest act of love I could give myself. Because I have learnt the hardest lesson, grief is not only about the child who died, but also about the self I lose when I stay where I am not respected. And cherished. I will not give my grief over to someone who cannot bear it.

Denial is my armour. Not because I wish to forget, but because the truth would shatter me entirely. I carry her quietly, in a cradle no one else can see, and in a grief no one else can name.

This is my story. Not of closure. Not of moving on. But of living beside an emptiness that is mine. And mine alone. A cradle without a child. And a heart that still rocks.

Sometimes, late at night, I stand beside her cradle. I touch its rails softly. I close my eyes. And I rock it.
Not to lull her to sleep, she is beyond needing lullabies.
Not to erase the silence, it is too deep for words.
But to honour her stillness. To hold her absence in motion.
To make my grief an offering, and my strength a prayer.

Every other night. At 3am. I rock an empty cradle.

I rock the empty air.