Easter, Years Later: Grief in the Season of Renewal

Easter looks different now.

Time has passed—more than I ever imagined it could. And while the sharp edges of early grief have softened, there’s still something tender and aching that rises each spring, carried in the pastel colors and the quiet hymns. Easter is supposed to be about renewal, about life returning, about hope. But when you’ve lost a child, even that kind of hope can feel complicated.

There’s something about the season that brings it all back.

Maybe it’s the way children’s voices fill the air at egg hunts. The sight of little shoes lined up for Sunday service. The baskets of treats, the excitement, the innocence. It all feels like a glimpse into a life that might have been. A version of the day where my child would have been there too—laughing, running, searching, living.

But that version of the day never arrived. And so instead, I live with a parallel one—where joy is laced with absence. Where I smile at the children I see, while silently aching for the one who isn’t with me. It’s not bitterness. It’s not envy. It’s just grief. Grief that has lasted through many springs, and likely always will.

Easter used to be a celebration of everything new and alive. Now it’s something more layered. It’s a day where I remember. A day where I wonder who they would be. What size dress shirt or Easter bonnet I’d be buying. Whether they’d roll their eyes at family pictures, or sneak candy when they thought I wasn’t looking.

I imagine these things in quiet moments. Not with tears every time anymore, but always with a kind of longing that words can’t quite reach.

And yet—there’s also something sacred in this season. In the way nature returns. In the soft buds on the trees. In the gentle reminders that life, even broken, can keep going. Not because we forget, but because we carry. Because love doesn’t die.

Maybe that’s what Easter means to me now: not a promise that all will be fixed, but a quiet assurance that what was loved deeply never truly disappears. That even after the coldest winters of our lives, something tender still tries to grow.

So, this Easter—years after losing my child—I’ll hold both truths in my hands. The sorrow of what’s missing. And the beauty of what remains.

I’ll speak their name. I’ll light a candle. I’ll look for signs of life, even in my grief. Because this season, more than most, teaches us that even in the darkest places, love finds a way to bloom again.