I want to set down, once and for all, the grief that tears my soul apart.
The loss of our child.
Our child, not yet ready for this world.
A world that did not let it come to be.
A child born in silence. Not alive. Yet wholly ours.

My wife, Maca, carried our first child.
Unexpected, yet perfectly timed.
It came in a dark, raw season, steeped in mourning and emptiness.
A year before, Maca lost her father.
Sudden, merciless.
He was torn from her loving hands.
Her anchor. Her reason. Her safety.

The time between that loss and her pregnancy was hell for Maca.
As if life had switched itself off.
As if curtains darkened the world and emotions crumbled into tears.
A gnawing sense of guilt, anger, incomprehension.
As if her lungs could no longer find air.
Yet some primal instinct compelled her to keep breathing.
Hell. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And yet, in the midst of that hell, something began to grow, unbidden.
Maca was pregnant.
She was angry. Happiness no longer existed.
Life seemed to stand still.
But within her, life stirred.
And I, I felt a quiet hope take root, though I scarcely dared to embrace it.

The pregnancy was heavy.
Perhaps from the weight of loss, like granite on a naked soul.
Yet despite complications and fears, each visit to the gynecologist kindled hope.
Everything seemed fine.
We dared to dream again, cautiously.

Still, Maca clung to her father’s shop, his soul woven into every detail.
She had taken over his store, with its staff.
I stood by her side.
But her health and grief sometimes made the work unbearable.
At times, I stood alone.
In a foreign land, where the language grated like sand in my mouth.
With people who needed guidance.

It was heavy.
But it worked.
Life began to move again.
We laughed again, tentatively.
We thought of tomorrow. Of togetherness. Of family.

Each week, we saw our child on the screen, a flickering gray image that filled our hearts with warm, silent pride.
We heard its heartbeat.
So beautiful. So peaceful. So perfect.
A miracle.
Everything seemed right.
We had passed the critical phase.

Until that night, when Maca jolted awake from a cramp
that, like a dagger, severed the lifeline between mother and child.
The gynecologist confirmed.
The heartbeat had stopped.

Our world collapsed.
First came denial.
Then the grief.
For me.

For Maca still bore the weight of her father’s loss.
And I, after two years of being her rock in her darkest hours,
sank into my own darkness.
As if the light had been extinguished.
As if mist and fog enveloped everything.

Our child was born, but without life.
Our flesh and blood did not breathe.
You are a father, yet without a child.
What remains is pain, unbearable.
Happiness is nothing but tears,
from sunrise to sunset.

But there was no time for mourning.
Maca needed me.
The shop had to open.
My job application in the Netherlands was pending.
Preparations for our move were in full swing.
Life went on.

Empty.
Silent.
Yet it went on.

Time slipped away like water through a sieve.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
Time heals wounds but the infection festers forever.

We had never given our child a place.
Never truly acknowledged our loss.

Until this year, two years later.
Then we knew: it was time.
We created a place.
In heaven. In the church. In our hearts.
A quiet place where candles burn and love endures,
though we remain blackened and sorrowful within.

For our child is gone.
But not in me.
Our child lives on, in the light, not in the silence.
For nothing does not exist.

I am the father of our child.
I love our child.
I miss our child.
That love, that longing, will always remain.

The world presses on. It demands silence around grief. But those who truly live know that loss never ends. It settles in. It is the truest truth of life.

Pascal Becker Hoff
July 2025.

Pascal Becker Hoff
May 2025
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