How Do I Survive Outliving My Child?

As the convoy rolled toward the village, we knew what was waiting for us. I closed my eyes and prayed for the best possible outcome.

“There’s no cure. He will be lucky to make it to his second birthday,” the doctor said. There was nothing to fight, nothing to fix. All we could do was take our son home and wait.

I didn’t scream when the first shots rang out. I didn’t freeze. I ran. I dove for cover behind a building as bullets watered the dirt around me. We were trapped, pinned down in the compound at the base of the mountain, waiting for air support. Minutes stretched into something endless.

We spent every second of every day worrying that it would be his last. As we watched our baby deteriorate before our eyes, my husband turned to God and asked, Why? Why make a child suffer like this? But honestly, no answer would have been good enough for me.

If I die in this godforsaken country, I swear I will haunt somebody. The thought hit me in that moment, absurd and desperate all at once. This can’t be it. I’m too young to die. I haven’t done anything with my life. I haven’t had children. Who will miss me? What legacy will I leave behind?

Years passed, and our son outlived the doctor’s prognosis. The fear never left, but our focus shifted. We stopped counting down and instead asked, What? What can we do to make every moment count?

The answer was simple: love him.

I survived that firefight. I survived every fight after that first encounter with the enemy. But I don’t know how to survive outliving my child.

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Lori Butierries is a full-time caregiver to two children with disabilities. She uses her life experiences and the medical knowledge she gained from serving as a Hospital Corpsman in the United States Navy to help others facing similar hardships. Lori is an author for The Havok Journal, an official columnist for AwareNow Magazine, and a contributor to The Mighty. Likewise, other news sites like MSN and Yahoo! News have also republished select articles Lori has written. Lori’s writing extends to children’s literature. Her debut picture book, GIFT FROM GOD, was self-published at the beginning of 2021 and placed as a finalist in two categories in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Lori’s long-term goals are to use her writing to educate others about, advocate for, and dismantle negative stereotypes regarding disability, mental health, and the military/veteran community.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.