“Miles’s Light – A Mother’s Words After Goodbye”.2496
Miles’s Story – A Mother’s Words After Goodbye
It has been weeks since my little boy, Miles, left this world — but time feels meaningless now. Days and nights blur together.
The house still smells like his shampoo, still echoes with his laughter. I keep expecting to hear the sound of his little feet running down the hallway, or his voice calling, “Mommy, look what I made!”
But all that’s left is silence.
Wednesday, July 2nd.
That date is carved into my memory. It was the day I brought my boy home. Not the way I once dreamed — not with balloons and joy, not with doctors cheering for his recovery — but because we knew his body could no longer fight.
The doctors at the Prinses Máxima Center did everything humanly possible. Six long months of chemotherapy, transfusions, sleepless nights, and whispered prayers.
That morning, when I was told we could finally go home, my heart broke in two. I knew it wasn’t the kind of “going home” any parent wishes for. It meant the hospital could do no more. It meant the end was near.
I carried Miles in my arms and whispered that everything would be okay, though every word tasted like salt and sorrow. He was tired — so small, so fragile — but when I laid him on my bed, he smiled faintly and said, “Mommy, I love your bed. It’s the softest in the world.”
And that’s where he wanted to stay. Not in a sterile room filled with machines and alarms, but in his mother’s arms, surrounded by love.
The days that followed were both a gift and a torment. We had no idea how much time was left. A few days? A week? Maybe two? We didn’t ask. We just lived, hour by hour, breath by breath.
We read his favorite books — The Gruffalo, Where the Wild Things Are. He still giggled at the same pages, though his laughter came out weaker, softer. We built little forts with blankets, drew pictures of rockets and rainbows, and made up stories about flying to the moon.
At night, he’d rest his tiny hand on my arm and whisper, “Don’t go far, okay?” I’d smile through my tears and say, “Never, my love. Mommy’s right here.”
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I watched him all night, memorizing every sound of his breathing, the way his chest rose and fell, the way his eyelashes brushed against his cheeks. I wanted to freeze time, to capture those moments forever.
Sometimes, I catch myself still whispering to him. When I pour his favorite cereal, when I pass his bedroom, when I sit by the window where he used to watch the rain. I tell him about my day, about how much I miss him, about how unfair life feels without him.
The truth is — I am angry. Angry that I couldn’t save him. Angry that such a pure, loving soul had to suffer. Angry that the world goes on, as if nothing happened, while my world has fallen apart.
People tell me he’s “in a better place.” I know they mean well, but it’s not comforting. The best place for a child is with their mother. And mine is gone.
Every day, I wake up and feel the weight of his absence like a stone in my chest. There are moments when the grief is so heavy I can barely breathe. I look at his empty bed, his toys, his drawings on the fridge — and the pain comes crashing down all over again.
They say time heals, but it doesn’t. Time just teaches you how to live with a wound that never closes.
Miles wasn’t just my son. He was my light, my laughter, my reason. He connected everyone around him. Nurses adored him — they’d call him “the little sunshine” of the ward. Even on his worst days, he still found a way to make others smile.
Once, during a painful procedure, he looked up at the nurse and said, “It’s okay, I’m brave today.” Everyone in the room cried. That was Miles — gentle, brave, full of life, even in the face of death.
He taught me more in five short years than I learned in my whole life. He taught me patience, compassion, and what it truly means to love without condition.
The day he left us was calm. Too calm. I was lying beside him, holding his hand, humming his favorite lullaby. His breathing grew slower, shallower, until it almost disappeared. And then, quietly, beautifully, he was gone.
I remember screaming silently inside — no sound, no air — just a pain so sharp it broke something deep within me. And yet, looking at him, there was peace. My beautiful boy, finally free from pain.
I kissed his forehead and whispered, “You can rest now, my love. Mommy’s here.”
And even though the world stopped, the birds still sang outside. Life, somehow, kept going.
Now, every morning, I open my eyes and face a world that feels too quiet, too empty. I walk through the house touching the things he loved — his blanket, his books, his little shoes by the door. I can’t bring myself to move them. They belong exactly where he left them.
Sometimes, when the light comes through his window just right, I feel him there. I swear I can almost hear his laughter. And in those moments, I know — he’s not truly gone. He lives in every memory, every breath I take.
I am learning to carry him differently now. Not in my arms, but in my heart.
I will always be his mother. That will never change. I am, and will forever be, a mother without her child — and that is the heaviest truth to live with. But I am also the mother of a boy who changed lives, who loved fiercely, who taught the world what it means to shine even in darkness.
Miles, my darling, you were my greatest gift, my reason, my heart.
Wherever you are — I hope you know — you are loved beyond words, missed beyond measure, and remembered beyond time.
Always,
Mommy ❤️
The Endless Loop — A Mother’s Faith in Her Son’s Fight.2539
💛 Camilo — The Endless Loop, and the Boy Who Still Holds On 💛
“Groundhog Day.”
That’s what today feels like.
Same questions.
Same symptoms.
Same heartbreak playing on repeat — just dressed in a slightly different shade of exhaustion.
It’s as if time has stopped inside these hospital walls, and all that moves is the steady drip of IV fluid into my son’s fragile veins.
Yesterday, it started again.
The vomiting. The diarrhea.
The kind that leaves you holding your breath, praying it slows before the next wave hits.
By evening, there was blood in his stool.
That word — blood — never gets easier to hear. It cuts through everything, even after all these months of battles, tests, and whispered reassurances.
The team came quickly, calm but concerned. They think it’s probably colitis again — his poor gut, inflamed from months of antibiotics and endless treatments.
We’ve seen this before.
Too many times.
Still, they ordered more labs, an X-ray, and stool tests — making sure there’s no infection hiding beneath the surface.
We can’t afford to assume anything, not when every new symptom could be another storm waiting to break.
This morning, the bleeding seems to have slowed.
Maybe because they’ve stopped all his feeds, giving his digestive system a break.
Maybe because they paused the blood thinner he takes for the PICC-line clot — a medication meant to keep him safe but now turned into another tightrope we have to walk.
It’s all a balancing act.
One wrong step, and everything can tip over.
Camilo is tired — the kind of tired that sits deep in the bones.
His skin looks pale, his eyes half-closed even when he’s awake.
He’s drained, worn down to the edge of what a body should have to endure.
And yet, he doesn’t complain.
He just lies there, silent, watching the light flicker on the ceiling as nurses come and go.
General Surgery came by today. They’re being consulted to see if we can finally switch antibiotics — the one thing he needs, but that’s destroying his gut in return.
GI stopped in too, confirming once again what we already know in our hearts:
It’s the medication.
It’s always the medication.
Yesterday, they replaced his G-tube and checked the placement, making sure there were no leaks or blockages adding to his pain. Everything looked fine.
Everything looks fine — except for him.
He was supposed to have an endoscopy tomorrow.
It’s been on the schedule for days.
But now they have to wait.
They can’t risk doing it while an infection is still a possibility — it could change the results, or worse, make things even harder for him.
So we wait.
We sit in the limbo that has become our normal, caught between “too soon” and “not yet.”
And while we wait, I write.
Because that’s what I do when I feel helpless — I write it out, line by line, as if words could somehow hold back the tide.
As I type these words, I feel like a broken record.
We’ve been here before.
Not even two weeks ago, we were in this same place — IVs beeping, test results pending, the same hollow ache in my chest.
Sometimes I wonder how many more loops we’ll have to go through before we find a way out.
But then I remember: we always find a way out.
It might take days, or weeks, or endless nights of whispered prayers — but somehow, Camilo always finds his way back to us.
He starts eating again.
He starts smiling again.
He starts laughing at the little things, like the sound of his nurse’s squeaky shoes or the stuffed penguin that somehow ended up wearing his hospital bracelet.
It’s the cycle we’ve come to know:
Break. Heal. Break again. Heal again.
Each time a little slower, a little harder — but still, he heals.
Yesterday, I took a picture that shattered my heart.
Camilo was sitting quietly in his chair, just a few steps away from the bathroom.
He wanted to stay close so he wouldn’t have to rush every time his stomach turned.
He sat there, his little shoulders slumped, IV lines snaking from his arms, his face pale and still.
It was such a simple image — but it said everything.
It said, “I’m tired.”
It said, “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
It said, “I’m fighting, Mom, but I’m so tired of fighting.”
And I felt my heart crack in two.
Because as a mother, there’s nothing more unbearable than watching your child hurt — not once, not twice, but over and over again.
You can hold them, you can whisper comfort, you can stay up all night by their side — but you can’t stop the pain.
You can’t take it for them.
And that’s the cruelest part.
Still, even in the quiet of this morning, I can feel that familiar whisper deep inside:
This too shall pass.
We’ve been here before, and we’ve made it through.
We will make it through again.
The cycle may feel endless — a Groundhog Day of pain, tests, and waiting — but every storm eventually breaks.
And when it does, Camilo will breathe easier, eat better, laugh again.
He’ll take another small step forward.
And I’ll be right beside him, matching every breath, every heartbeat, every prayer.
Tonight, when the hospital lights dim and the hallways grow still, I’ll hold his hand and remind him — and myself — that healing doesn’t always come fast or easy.
Sometimes it comes in whispers, in tiny victories we almost miss:
a calmer night, a quieter stomach, a single meal kept down.
Those are the miracles we live for now.
And until the next sunrise, I’ll keep believing in them.
Because that’s what hope looks like in this life — fragile, persistent, and endlessly brave.
💛 Praying for quick healing. Praying for strength. Praying for peace for my sweet boy. 💛
