This post is for the ones who don’t usually get a post written for them.
The fathers. The husbands. The brothers and uncles and grandfathers and friends. The men who showed up to the hospital and held it together. The men who stood at the graveside and didn’t know where to put it. The men who went back to work the following week because life kept moving and someone had to keep moving with it.
The men who grieved — and are still grieving — quietly.
This one is for you.
The Grief Nobody Talks About
We talk a lot about the grief of mothers.
And we should — it is real and it is profound and it deserves every bit of the space it gets.
But there is another grief sitting right beside it that does not get nearly as much acknowledgment.
The grief of the father who held his wife together in the hospital room while his own heart was breaking.
The grief of the man who was handed a baby he would never get to know — and had to find somewhere to put that love with nowhere to go.
The grief of the husband who watched the woman he loves walk through the worst thing she has ever experienced — and felt the weight of not being able to fix it.
The grief of a father who never quite got to know his child the way a mother does.
Because pregnancy is intimate in a way that belongs uniquely to the mother. A father can put his hand on the belly and feel the kicks. He can talk to his baby and sing to her and pray over her. He can show up to every appointment and read every book and be as present as any father has ever been.
And still — he experiences his child from the outside.
The mother carries her on the inside. Feels every movement. Knows her before anyone else does.
And when that baby is gone — the father grieves not only the child he lost, but the relationship he never quite got to begin. The getting-to-know-you that was supposed to happen on the other side of the delivery room and never did.
That is a grief that does not get named very often.
That grief is real. It is heavy. And it matters.
What I Observed
I have had a front row seat to men walking through the loss of a child — and the loss of a grandchild.
My brother-in-law — who stood beside my sister when Madison Joy died, who held his family together with a quiet strength I will never forget, and who walked through the kind of grief that reshapes a person from the inside out.
My husband — Lucy’s daddy — who sat beside my hospital bed the night before we delivered her, who fell asleep in that chair after hours of holding me together, and who has carried his own grief with a steadiness and a faith that has humbled me more times than I can count.
You can read the full story of that night here.
And then there are the grandfathers.
Our dads — who watched their own sons & daughters walk through the unsurvivable and could not fix it. Who held their own grief while trying to hold ours. Who lost a grandchild and gained a whole new layer of pain that nobody had prepared them for either.
There is something particularly heavy about that grief — the grief of a father watching his child suffer. It sits on top of their own loss rather than instead of it. They are grieving the grandchild they will never know and grieving alongside the child they have always known — at the same time, with nowhere to put either one.
And the world does not always give men a natural space for that.
There is a pressure — spoken or unspoken — to be strong. To keep it together. To be the steady one. To hold everyone else up while quietly setting their own grief aside until there is a better time for it.
Sometimes that better time never comes.
I know my dad carried this. He still does. And I know this because recently — years after losing both Madison Joy and Lucy Grace — he read the manuscript for Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping?
And he cried.
Not because the book was sad — though it is, in the honest and necessary way that all true things about grief are.
But because grief, when it is finally given words and a place to land, has a way of releasing something that has been held for a very long time.
That is what this post is for.
To give it a place to land.
A Letter to Lucy Grace
written by her daddy
When we lost Lucy Grace I asked Jonathon to write a letter to her — something we could keep in a memory book for our family. Something that would make sure her story was held in his own words, not just mine.
What he wrote stopped me in my tracks.
I want to share it with you today — with his permission and with all the love and grief it carries:
I never got to know you quite like your mommy did. But in the last few weeks of you being in your mommy’s tummy, you kicked and kicked. You loved to kick anytime I’d put my hand on your mommy’s tummy — as if to say, “Hey, get your own space.” I even joked with people that I thought you’d be a red-head, because I was pretty sure you’d come out having a really fun and fiery personality. But you weren’t. You had brown hair just like your beautiful mom.
I always looked forward to those moments that seemed few and far between. Like rocking you to sleep, or holding your hands for some of your first steps. Taking you to your first day of school. Baptizing you. And walking you down the aisle as you would marry a man who loves Jesus and loves you. But I never got to do that with you.
Some day I’ll get to know you — the true you. The you that God created you to be. Until then, I’ll just have to settle for the you that I have concocted up in my mind of what you would have been like. But there will be a missing piece in my heart and our family this side of heaven.
Getting to know you would have been an incredible joy in my life. Dealing with your loss was never something that I dreamed would happen, but something that I will allow God to teach me tremendous things. I miss you and I love you.
— Daddy
I have read that letter more times than I can count.
And every single time, the line that gets me is this one —
“Baptizing you.”
Jonathon is a pastor. He has had the privilege of baptizing many people — children and adults — marking the moment they step into a public declaration of their faith. It is one of the most sacred things he gets to do. It’s one of the moments that he dreamt about as a father.
He never got to do it for his own daughter.
That is a grief that lives in a very particular place. The place where calling and fatherhood were supposed to intersect — and didn’t.
And he carried it. Quietly. Faithfully. With a grace that I do not fully understand but have been deeply grateful for every day since.
For the Men Who Are Still Carrying It
If you are a father who has lost a child — If you are a husband who held your wife together while your own heart broke — If you are a brother or an uncle or a grandfather or a friend who showed up and stayed —
I want you to know something.
Your grief is not less real because it is quieter. Your love is not less deep because it did not have as many words. Your loss is not less significant because the world moved on before you were ready.
You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to say her name. You are allowed to miss the moments you never got to have — the first steps, the first day of school, the walk down the aisle, the ordinary Tuesday evenings that never came.
You are allowed to have a missing piece.
If you are a father navigating child loss, “Grieving Dads” by Kelly Farley was written specifically for you.
What Faith Looks Like in a Grieving Father
One of the things that has struck me most about watching Jonathon and my brother-in-law walk through loss is this —
Their faith did not make the grief smaller.
But it gave the grief somewhere to go.
There is a difference between a man who grieves without hope and a man who grieves with it. Not in the size of the pain — but in the foundation underneath it. The thing that holds when everything else is shaking.
Jonathon said it himself in that letter —
“Dealing with your loss was never something that I dreamed would happen, but something that I will allow God to teach me tremendous things.”
That sentence is not the absence of grief. That is grief submitting itself to something bigger than itself. That is a father choosing — in the middle of the hardest thing he has ever faced — to stay open to what God might do with the broken pieces.
That is faith. Not the kind that makes everything okay. The kind that holds you when nothing is.
To the Women Who Love Grieving Men
Before I close I want to speak briefly to the women reading this who love a man who is grieving quietly.
He may not have the words. He may not cry in front of you. He may go back to work and mow the lawn and fix things around the house because doing something — anything — is the only way he knows how to hold it.
That is not absence. That is how some people carry love.
Give him grace. Say her name in front of him. Let him know that his grief has a place in your home — not just yours. And trust that God is doing something in him that may not be visible yet.
I wrote about the power of showing up – even without the right words – here.
A Note on the Book
Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? was written with Owen and his mama at the center — but it was written for every member of the family sitting on that couch.
Including Daddy.
Grief is not one conversation — and it does not belong to only one person in the family. This book is a tool for every grown-up who loves a grieving child and needs honest, faith-rooted words for the hardest conversation they will ever have.
Whatever the loss. Whoever the child. Whoever is sitting beside them on the couch.
The Old to New journals include specific prayers to pray over your spouse and your children – a practical tool for any season, including grief.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18
If this post found its way to a father who needed it today — share it with him. And if you are that father — I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. Your story matters here too.
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