People think, like I used to, that when a couple loses their child or children that their loss is shared. The child or children him or herself are shared, but the loss, the loss is different.

As I sit here on the first Father’s Day after losing our twin boys on November 29, 2024, that difference is evident. Leading up to today, I struggled. Most of the last few nights for me ended in tears, holding their blankets, one of the only things they ever touched in this world.

Anthony would try to settle me. I would refuse. He would try again until my resolve was eroded by the late hour, and eventually, I would concede to my own exhaustion.

But for him, he might tell me that he’s been sad, that is, if I asked. He doesn’t hide his feelings about Gus Gus and Benny, but how he feels them, how he misses them, is gentler. I don’t know why this surprised me because that’s also how his love is — gentle, persistent, patient. His love for them is holding their mother, crying at their absence once more. His love for them is making dinner when I’m cemented to our bed. His love for them is distracting me enough to get me to close my eyes.

So, today, it feels odd for me to have much to say to fathers, but there are a few things I can say to the wife of a man who’s lost his child or children.

You don’t understand his loss. You can see it, empathize with it, but you can’t touch it, can’t hold it. If you did, I think it would feel both familiar and foreign—tasting of the same bitter ache that lives inside of you and will forever stay under your skin, ready to break through at any moment.

You want to know it. You want to swim in his grief as he jumps into yours to retrieve you. You want to rescue him from it, and yet, he’s not at risk of drowning. Sometimes I worry he’s more at risk of never getting wet at all.

And like I said, I don’t understand it either. But I’ve come to understand something about how he feels this chasm. You both lost the same child or children, in our case, but how you experienced that loss, the roles you each played as you felt the bomb blast through your abdomen the moment you realized that nothing was going to change your little one’s fate, the first, middle, or last times you saw them—if you were blessed to, it was all different. Not worse. Not better. Just different.

When you crumbled on the floor, all of your bones crashing in against themselves, with nothing inside of you to keep them steady, he pulled you up. When every weapon of destruction broke through whatever defenses you’d ever built, he used his back to shield you. When you went to fly to heaven too, it was his arms that held you together like a thick string around shreds of fabric, planting you back in life.

No, his loss couldn’t have been the same, because it had to be more controlled, more intentional, more focused. He closed the door to the part of the ship that was exploding, so he could escape with you alive. Sometimes, he wonders if he really succeeded.

While you certainly watched him, crushed at all he lost, at who he lost, it wasn’t the same as how he looked at you. He lost them. He lost a piece of himself. And, if it weren’t enough, he lost a piece of you. At best, those pieces are limb-sized, at worst, they are heart-sized. He watched you die in a way no one else did or could. He watched helplessly as his wife withered, and thrashed, and broke, and bled, again and again and again. And he knows he will have to for the rest of his life.

His grief is not greater, not less than, and yet, not equal to the grief of a mother because he is a father. He is a man. And, if you’re incredibly lucky, he is still doing his best to be it all.

The check in messages will slow for you, and it will hurt, but few will ever come for him. He will carry it in a way that you can’t, just as you carry it in a way he won’t. It’s hard and confusing and sometimes, even frustrating, but it’s purposeful. It has to be.

To the father who’s lost his child or children, there are no words to make what you’ve seen, experienced, and continue to hold better. I pray that you feel your loss authentically with both the vulnerability and strength you will undoubtedly need. Thank you for carrying a weight that only you can. Thank you for holding your children, your family, your wife, and yourself when no one else can. This is your sacred duty and your heavy burden—may you navigate it well.