Travel On My Brave Soldier: A Poem for Grieving Military Mothers

“Travel On My Brave Soldier”: A Poem for Grieving Military Mothers

A compassionate poem for families carrying military suicide loss, honoring sons and daughters through service, memory, courage, and a mother’s enduring love.

About This Poem

I wrote “Travel On My Brave Soldier” for mothers carrying the loss of military sons and daughters to suicide. The poem grew from a Memorial Day I still carry: Dylan’s worst suicide attempt, one month before his death on June 25, 2012. He had attempted suicide four times. I know the terror of loving a child through suicidal crisis, the questions that remain after death, and the stigma that still narrows how suicide loss is spoken of and grieved. Here, I want the poem to stand in honor of bereaved military mothers and the children they remember in the fullness of their lives and service. I tell more of my own Memorial Day story in When Memorial Day Becomes a Threshold: A Mother’s Story of Suicide Loss and Enduring Love.

Why This Poem Belongs to Bereaved Military Mothers, Parents, and Families

“Travel On My Brave Soldier” reaches beyond one life and one uniform. Its wings, dragons, stars, and safer shores make room for the full sweep of love: fierce, tender, restless, and enduring. Written especially for mothers grieving military sons or daughters lost to suicide, the poem may also companion fathers, siblings, families, fellow service members, and those who stand beside them in suicide loss. It says what grief so often struggles to say: a child’s final suffering does not erase a lifetime of courage or the honor of service. Memory keeps the whole person intact.

“Travel On My Brave Soldier”: Poem

Dedicated to bereaved mothers of military sons and daughters lost to suicide, and in loving memory of Tony Shott, who honorably served in the United States Marines and Army. Tony’s service, courage, and life remain worthy of remembrance.

Travel On My Brave Soldier

Travel on my brave soldier
Travel on wild one,
Take heart winged warrior
Unencumbered take great strides.

Ride dragon’s wings forever
Stay free here evermore,
Follow infinity to the heavens
Travel on to safer shores.

That might I find here right behind you
Wings that span the breadth of time,
May I follow without ceasing,
The way you gave your love to life.

Might I hold your hope forever
Where your light will always shine,
Glory be to stars that keep you
The way I kept you when you were mine.

© Beth Brown, 2025
“Travel On My Brave Soldier”

Explore More Poems on My Forever Son

Poems from the First Shock of Suicide Loss

He Left Too Soon
A funeral-day lament written from the stunned center of acute grief, where weather, faith, and a mother’s broken heart seem to grieve together.

If Only a Mother’s Love Could Have Saved You
A mother’s plainspoken cry beneath suicide grief: the impossible wish that love alone could have kept her child alive.

Bury My Heart
A later memorial-date poem about belongings, absence, and the truth that a mother buries part of herself with her child.

Still from Sky I’m Falling
A poem of guilt, falling, birds, and the slow beginning of self-forgiveness after losing Dylan to suicide.

Derecho: A Storm Out of Nowhere
The story behind Dylan’s funeral-day storm, where the sudden force of weather mirrors the violence of acute grief.

Beat Still My Heart
An early elegy of breath, keening, disbelief, and the body’s refusal to understand what the heart already knows.

Poems of Guilt, Longing, and “If Only”

That All of Love Could Sweep Time Back
A poem for the should-haves, could-haves, and would-haves that circle a parent after child suicide loss.

If Earth Were Sky (And Sky Above)
A nature-shaped longing poem imagining earth and sky rearranged so a mother might reach her child again.

Once Upon a Blue-Sky Moon
A memory poem returning to childhood, adolescence, and all a mother wished she had known in time.

Falling Stars in a Moonless Sky
A later-grief poem of stars, distance, and a mother’s longing to imagine where her child might be now.

Sorrow Buried in Love
A poem for long-term grief, the comments that wound, and the truth that love and sorrow keep living together.

I Couldn’t Save My Son
A companion reflection for parents facing the most punishing sentence after suicide loss: I loved my child, and I could not save him.

Ode to Suicide: That We Might Understand
A poetic argument for compassion over stigma, asking readers to see the suffering and complexity beneath suicide loss.

Poems of Memory, Nature, and Long-Term Grief

On Baby’s Breath and Angel Wings
A tender poem of guilt, wishing, and the ache of wanting to change what no mother can undo.

My Child on Earth Above in Heaven’s Care
A lullaby of continuing love, faith, and the hope that a mother’s bond reaches where her arms cannot.

Carrying Ache and Love
A long-grief reflection on learning to live with ache and love in the same breath.

Shaped by Love—and This Grief Come to Stay
A later-grief poem recognizing that loving Dylan and grieving Dylan now live together, always.

The Beat of My Heart Shaped by You
A grief poem written fourteen years after losing Dylan, age twenty, to suicide on June 25, 2012. It speaks from the long middle of child loss, where grief and healing walk together, and where a mother keeps listening backward—wondering whether love could have reached farther, spoken louder, or stood closer—while still knowing her son remains in memory, breath, garden, weather, and every changed beat of her heart.

Tillers of the Earth and Tenders of the Soil
A meditation on tending, aging, winter, fireflies, water, and the open-ended hope of return.

I Want to Believe
A mid-grief poem searching for belief when hope will not arrive whole.

11 Years After Suicide Loss: I Still Want to Believe
A long-term grief poem about watching other lives unfold while still reaching toward hope.

I Want It All Back
A poem for wanting every ordinary thing returned: voice, body, future, and the life that should have continued.

Poems of Honor, Remembrance, and Continuing Bonds

Twenty Years of Love: Dylan
A family tribute that keeps Dylan’s whole life in view: twenty years loved, remembered, and still present in story.

Travel On My Brave Soldier: A Poem for Grieving Military Mothers
The companion post for this featured poem, honoring military sons and daughters lost to suicide with dignity, compassion, and hope.

About the Author

About Beth Brown, Dylan’s Mom

I am Beth Brown, Dylan’s mom, the creator and writer behind My Forever Son. I teach literature, rhetoric, and composition, but I write this blog from the quieter place grief made in me after Dylan, my only child, died by suicide in 2012. These poems began as midnight fragments when ordinary speech could not hold the emotional weight of what happened. My words remain literary, lyric, Midwestern, and plainspoken because that is the only voice grief left me—and the voice through which healing slowly began to breathe.

Read the Complete Poetry Collection on Kindle

If “Travel On My Brave Soldier” has given you a place to rest with love, service, remembrance, and suicide loss, my full poetry collection may offer another place to keep reading. Where a Mother’s Grief Resides: Poems of Child Loss and the Work of Living On gathers my grief poems into a deliberate emotional sequence—from the first stunned days after Dylan’s death, through guilt and longing, toward the long work of living on with love still present.

Read Where a Mother’s Grief Resides on Amazon Kindle

I wrote these poems as Dylan’s mom, and I gathered them for grieving parents who know how love can remain after everything familiar has been broken open. If one line in this post has sounded like something you have carried without language, the Kindle collection offers more of that same voice—literary, plainspoken, Midwestern, and written from one grieving mother to another.

Continue reading related poem posts: Explore the classified poem links above for work on first shock, guilt, longing, memory, nature, long-term grief, honor, remembrance, and continuing bonds.

A Realistic Note About Healing

This fourteen-year span has changed the shape of my grief. Time moves strangely after child suicide loss. Some mornings, Dylan’s death feels close enough to touch, as though June 25, 2012, has only just happened. Other days, I move through the hours more steadily, held by the work of teaching, writing, remembering, and keeping Dylan’s name present. I write because love still moves through my words, and in language, I find healing enough to carry ache and love.

Related / Companion Reads from My Forever Son

When Memorial Day Becomes a Threshold: A Mother’s Story of Suicide Loss and Enduring Love
A Memorial Day reflection on service, love, suicide loss, and the tender remembering asked of families grieving military sons and daughters.

Travel On My Brave Soldier: A Poem for Grieving Military Mothers
A memorial poem for grieving parents honoring a beloved son who served in the military and later died by suicide—offering remembrance, courage, and tender companionship.

Twenty Years of Love: Dylan
A remembrance of Dylan and the enduring bond of love.

If You Need Immediate Support

This page is about poetry. Still, if you or someone you love is in immediate danger or crisis, please reach for live help now. In the U.S., call or text 988 for immediate crisis support.

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