I Found You, Baby Boy

There are some goodbyes that happen in a hospital room.

And there are others that take years.

For a long time, I did not remember the accident that took my mother and my son. My mind protected me from it. I survived. I climbed up a embankment for help. And then everything went dark.

But one image stayed with me.

Jonathan, alone in the wreckage.

I never saw him again. We were separated after the crash — taken to different hospitals. I did not attend his funeral. I did not get to say goodbye. The last moment I held him was before the accident. And in my mind, for decades, he remained there — in that broken place.

Until the day I found his chart.

Years later, in the basement of the very hospital where he passed, a dusty box held the record of his final hours. It told me how long he was cared for. It told me he was not alone. It told me he was tended to gently until his last breath.

And something in me shifted.

Still, even knowing that, the image of the wreckage lingered. A mother’s heart does not easily rewrite what it has imagined.

Then the music came.

“I Found You, Baby Boy.”

When the melody rose and then softened — when the whisper came, “I love you”… and then “Goodbye” — something sacred happened inside me.

Through the music, I was able to do what I had never done.

In my heart and in my mind’s eye, I walked back into that moment. I lifted him out of the wreckage. I carried him where he had already been carried in real life — into care, into light, into gentleness.

I held him.

He was peaceful.

Like the day I first took him home from the hospital.

That day of deep crying was not despair. It was release. It was love moving freely instead of being trapped in silence.

This song did not erase grief.

It rewrote an image.

It gave me a way to say, “I love you,” and finally, “Goodbye.”

And in that sacred space, I realized something I had always known but never spoken:

Love never left.

Jonathan was never alone.

And neither was I.

Some healing does not come through answers.

It comes through allowing love to move again.

Is there a memory you are holding that might need gentleness instead of fear?

From my journey that became Gathering the Pieces — written for hearts learning how to carry love and loss together.