“Bury My Heart”: A Grief Poem After Losing My Only Child to Suicide

“Bury My Heart”: A Grief Poem After Losing My Only Child to Suicide

By Beth Brown | Poetry for Grieving Parents | June 15, 2023

Sorting through the life my son left behind, eight years into grief.

“Bury my heart / I’ve come undone, / Sorting through this life / My son left behind.”

Eight Years Into Grief: Sorting Through What Dylan Left Behind

If you are here because your child died by suicide, I am so deeply sorry. I know there is no easy way into these words. I wrote “Bury My Heart” eight years into my grief, bearing down on Dylan’s memorial date, when I found myself once again sorting through what my son had left behind: his clothing, his music, his guitars, the tangible things that still connected me to him across the absence his death had left in my life.

At eight years, I had already lived through the first few years of excruciating pain. I had already come through seven memorial dates. I had already sifted and sorted through memories, through the things I could bear to touch and through the things I could not. Still, I had not let go of some of Dylan’s belongings, especially his clothing. I held his t-shirts close, embracing and hugging them, searching and seeking my son who was not there.

That day, the poem became a kind of list-making from the depths of a mother’s heart: sorting, sifting, remembering, questioning why I still hurt so much after so much grief had already passed through me. Then came the blunt truth. These things were all I had left to hold in my hands. I wanted Dylan. I despaired because I knew I would never get him back. Holding on to his things could not bring him home, yet parting with them felt, then, like losing him all over again.

“Bury My Heart” is not a simple poem of healing, and it is not easy hope. It is grief work: painful, draining, necessary, and honest. It is the reaching for what is no longer here. It is learning, slowly and painfully, that love does not live inside the clothing, the guitars, the saved things, though those things may carry memory, scent, sound, and sorrow. Fourteen years later, I know Dylan is always with me. At eight years, all I could feel was the raw grip of his absence.

If you are a grieving parent, especially a parent grieving the suicide death of your only child, you may know this place too: the impossible work of deciding what to keep, what to release, what still hurts to touch, and what cannot be changed. This poem does not ask you to be beyond your grief. It stands inside the place where grief and love are buried together, where accepting what cannot be changed takes time, and where hope, when it comes, may first arrive as the strength to survive the next honest moment.

What This Poem Holds

• “Bury My Heart” speaks from the interior life of a mother grieving the suicide death of her only child.
• The poem holds sorrow without softening it: the undone heart, the backward pull of time, the search for a son who should still be here.
• Its power lies in its refusal to resolve what cannot be resolved. It lets catastrophic grief speak in its own voice.

Poem: “Bury My Heart”

BURY MY HEART

Bury my heart
I’ve come undone,
Sorting through this life
My son left behind.

And what I’m seeking,
I know I’ll never find,
His touch, his smile—
His still living his life.

And so instead I sift through
A still-life dream,
My heart and life with him,
Forever it seemed.

And oh my son
I’m still paralyzed,
In the grief you left me
Eight years behind.

Where canst I go?
Whom canst I see?
When all I want with you
Is forever to be.

And how my heart keeps on beating
Is a mystery to all,
For without you beside me
Through life’s depth I crawl.

I live now life backwards
My heart beating in time,
To the life that we lived
When you, child, were mine.

Try as I might
I can’t seem to live,
For my dreams all belonged,
To your future forward lived.

And so where now I goeth
And where knoweth I dwell,
Once again and all over
Life without you is hell.

I ache without breathing
For to breathe is to die,
Once again and all over
Without you in my life.

© Beth Brown, 2021, “Bury My Heart”

More Poems and Companion Pieces from My Forever Son

These poems and companion pieces continue the language of child loss, suicide loss, memory, love, guilt, longing, and the hard work of living after losing a child. Each one opens a different part of grief for parents who may be searching for words close to their own.

• “Bury My Heart” — the featured poem in this post, written eight years into grief as I sorted through Dylan’s clothing, music, guitars, and the tangible pieces of the life he left behind. It speaks to the moment when holding what remains in your hands cannot quiet the anguish of wanting your child back.
• “Ode to Suicide: That We Might Understand” — a poem and reflection that asks readers to meet suicide loss with compassion rather than blame. It turns toward the suffering behind suicide, the devastation left for those who love the person who died, and the need to speak of suicide with mercy.
• “He Left Too Soon” — a grief poem shaped by the sudden violence of the derecho storm around Dylan’s funeral and the impossible rupture of losing him in early summer. It holds the shock of a life ended too soon and the stunned aftermath of a mother standing in what remains.
• “That All of Love Could Sweep Time Back” — a poem of guilt, longing, and a mother’s desperate wish to undo what cannot be undone. It gives voice to the ache of wanting love itself to reach backward and save the child who could not be saved.
• “Still from Sky I’m Falling” — a poem about the haunting after suicide loss: the falling, the shock that does not fully end, the questions that return, and the guilt that can cling to a grieving parent even when love was never absent.
• “On Baby’s Breath and Angel Wings” — a poem that holds tenderness beside devastation, returning to remembrance, beauty, and the fragile objects and images that gather around a child’s life after death.
• “Shaped by Love—and This Grief Come to Stay” — a poem and reflection on refusing to let suicide stigma define a child’s story. It centers love, memory, and the grief that remains because the child remains beloved.
• “White Peonies in Bloom” — a deeply personal poem and reflection returning to Dylan’s depression, his suicide attempts, Memorial Day, and the painful approach of June. It carries the dread and tenderness of the season before his death date.
• “I Want It All Back” — a remembrance of Dylan and a mother’s longing for the ordinary days, the future, the time, and the presence suicide took. It speaks plainly from the desire every bereaved parent knows: wanting the child, the life, and the before.
• “I Want to Believe” — a poem searching for hope after losing Dylan to suicide, not as an easy answer but as something fragile, difficult, and necessary to reach for while still carrying grief.
• “Build a Life of Love Around the Loss” — a companion piece on finding a way to live with grief without abandoning love. It speaks to the slow work of making a life that can hold sorrow, memory, and a continuing bond with the child who died.

About This Poem

I am Beth Brown, Dylan’s mom, and the writer behind My Forever Son. I lost my only child, Dylan, to suicide on June 25, 2012. Poetry became one way I could speak from the place where ordinary language failed me—not to explain suicide loss, not to make it acceptable, and not to make grief smaller, but to tell the truth about a mother’s love after the death of her child.

“Bury My Heart” belongs to that truth. It carries the sorrow of losing Dylan, the devastation of living without my only child, and the grief that continues because love continues. I share it here for grieving parents who do not need their sorrow corrected. They need room for it to be named.

More from My Forever Son

• If You Just Lost Your Child
• Navigating Grief After Losing a Child to Suicide
• Finding Immediate Support Resources for Suicide Loss Survivors
• Understanding Suicide: It’s Not a Choice
• What to Say to Parents Who Lose a Child to Suicide
• Poetry for Grieving Parents

A Message for the Parent Reading This

I will not tell you that hope makes this loss less terrible. I do not believe that. What I can say is that hope, when it becomes possible, may be very small and very quiet. It may be the fact that you made it through one more hour. It may be drinking water, feeding the dog, answering one text, touching your child’s photograph, saying your child’s name, or letting yourself rest without apology.

For a long time, survival may be the work. That is not failure. That is grief after the suicide death of a child. If you are still here, still breathing, still loving your child with all that remains of you, then something in you is holding on. Let that be enough for today.

For Reflection: Where You Are Today

There is no single place you are supposed to be in grief. If this poem finds you sorting through your child’s belongings, unable to touch them, unable to part with them, or surprised by how much they still undo you, please know this does not mean you are grieving wrong. It means your love is still meeting the reality of your child’s absence.

• What am I still holding because it helps me feel close to my child?
• What am I holding because I am afraid that letting go of it means losing more of my child?
• What is one small, honest way I can care for myself today, without asking grief to be different than it is?
• What part of my child lives in me that no object can keep and no death can take?

Take only what helps. Leave the rest. Grief after the suicide death of a child is already heavy enough without one more demand placed upon it.

Support Resources for Bereaved Parents After Suicide Loss

If you are in immediate danger, feel you may harm yourself, or cannot stay safe, call emergency services now or go to the nearest emergency room. In the United States, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also contact Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You do not have to explain your whole story before asking for help; you can simply say, “My child died by suicide, and I do not feel safe being alone right now.”

For suicide-loss support beyond the first emergency moment, look for care that understands both bereavement and trauma. These resources may help you find the kind of support you need next.

Suicide-loss support

• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: suicide-loss resources, support-group listings, Healing Conversations, and guides for survivors of suicide loss.
• Alliance of Hope: a 24/7 online community, support for newly bereaved suicide-loss survivors, and resources for parents grieving a child’s suicide.
• The Compassionate Friends: support for families after the death of a child, including local chapters, online support, and family-specific bereavement materials.

Ongoing grief and trauma support

• Look for a grief-informed therapist or trauma-informed counselor who has experience with suicide bereavement.
• Ask local hospice programs, hospitals, counseling centers, or funeral homes whether they know of suicide-loss survivor groups in your area.
• If online support feels safer right now, choose carefully moderated communities for parents bereaved by suicide.

Start here on My Forever Son

These pillar pages are written for grieving parents who need support that is honest, practical, and specific to child loss and suicide loss. Choose the page that best fits where you are today.

• If your child died recently: If You Just Lost Your Child
• If your child died by suicide: Navigating Grief After Losing a Child to Suicide
• If you need immediate support: Finding Immediate Support Resources for Suicide Loss Survivors
• If you are trying to understand suicide: Understanding Suicide: It’s Not a Choice
• If others do not know what to say: What to Say to Parents Who Lose a Child to Suicide
• If poetry helps you feel less alone: Poetry for Grieving Parents

These pages are not meant to fix what cannot be fixed. They are places to return to when you need language, steadiness, and support for the next part of the day.

About the Author

Beth Brown is Dylan’s mom and the writer behind My Forever Son, a blog for grieving parents living after the death of a child. After losing her only child, Dylan, to suicide on June 25, 2012, Beth began writing from the uncharted terrain of child loss, suicide loss, love, memory, and the long work of learning how to live with grief carried in the deepest part of the heart.

Alongside “Bury My Heart,” Beth writes many poems for bereaved parents—poems about the first raw years of child loss, the ache of memorial dates, the silence after suicide, the love that remains, and the difficult movement between holding on, letting go, remembering, and surviving. Her poetry does not ask grief to be tidy or small. It gives language to the places parents may recognize but may not yet be able to say aloud.

Readers who connect with Beth’s poetry can find more of her work in her Kindle book, Where a Mother’s Grief Resides: Poems of Child Loss and the Work of Living On, available on Amazon Kindle. The collection gathers poems from a mother’s heart after the loss of her son and offers grieving parents words for sorrow, memory, love, and the grief work that continues because love continues.

Closing Thought

If “Bury My Heart” meets you in the place where you are still sorting through your child’s things, your memories, your questions, or the terrible permanence of suicide loss, may you take from it only this: you are not failing because grief still hurts. Love remains, even when what we can hold in our hands must change.

Wherever you are in your grief today—holding on, letting go, unable to decide, or simply trying to make it through another memorial season—you are still your child’s parent. Your love has not ended. Your grief has not disqualified you from healing. And your child’s life, name, and place in your heart remain part of your story.

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Poem: “Bury My Heart”

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