A Mother’s Breaking Point: Letting Go When Every Fiber Screams to Hold On
Today I was asked to sign a DNR for my five-year-old son.
Even as I write those words, they feel like they belong to someone else’s life. Not mine. Not his. Not the boy whose laughter has filled every corner of our home for the past five years.
And yet, here I am—pen trembling in my hand, a paper before me that says, in blunt medical language, that if his little heart stops beating, we are choosing not to bring him back.
They tell me he has days, maybe weeks. Not months. Not years. Just this fragile sliver of time, and then silence.
He has already completed two of the five planned sessions of radiation. The doctors say if he does well over the weekend, he will get the third session on Monday.
His tentative discharge date is Wednesday, but even that comes with a caveat: he may not make it home. I can’t begin to describe what it feels like to sit in a room full of professionals, listening to them talk about your child as though his life is measured in a handful of appointments, in doses, in percentages.
And then came the conversation I had dreaded but knew was coming: the one with his oncologist about not intervening anymore. About stopping. About surrender.
For years, every waking second of our lives has been about intervening. We carefully, desperately chose his next steps, weighing risks against hope.
Chemo. Radiation. Surgery. New drugs. Old drugs. Clinical trials. We pinned our dreams to charts, scans, and whispered promises that maybe—just maybe—this next treatment would be the one to turn the tide.
And now it all just… stops.
No more clinic appointments.
No more scans.
No more pokes.
No more poison.
No more hospital admissions.
The list reads like a cruel mercy. For him, maybe it is. For me, it is an open wound. I don’t know how to mother him without fighting for him. I don’t know how to sit still while disease steals more of him every day. I don’t know how to stop.
I’m not okay. I will never be okay again.
When he was first diagnosed, I clung to faith like a lifeline. I prayed until my knees ached. I bargained with God in the darkest hours, whispering promises into the hospital room shadows: take anything, everything, but don’t take him.
I told myself that miracles happen, that children beat the odds, that faith can move mountains.
But today, as I sat across from his doctor and signed my name on a piece of paper that felt like a death sentence, I realized something inside me has broken. I have lost all faith in God. He has failed me, my son, and my family.
Because what kind of God lets a five-year-old suffer like this? What kind of God listens to the prayers of a mother and stays silent? What kind of God gives me a child so full of light, only to snuff it out before he has even had the chance to grow?
I don’t have answers. Only rage. Only grief. Only this impossible task of learning how to say goodbye when every cell in my body screams to hold on.
He is still here now. His smile is smaller, his body weaker, but his spirit—oh, his spirit still shines. Yesterday, he asked me if we could go to the park again.
I smiled and said maybe, though I know the truth: he may never feel the swing under his legs again, may never run across the grass chasing bubbles. He doesn’t understand what is happening. How could he? He is five.
His world should be dinosaurs and finger paints and giggles that echo through playgrounds. Instead, his world is IV poles and radiation masks and conversations he should never have to overhear.
And yet, he still laughs sometimes. He still reaches for my hand. He still asks for bedtime stories, even when he is too tired to stay awake for the ending.
I wonder if he knows more than he says. Children have a way of sensing things. Sometimes I catch him staring at me, his big eyes filled with something I can’t name. Acceptance? Sadness? Wisdom far too heavy for a little boy?
I can’t stop thinking about the small things I will lose. The way he runs to me when I open the front door. The sound of his belly laughs when his dad makes silly voices. The way his eyelashes rest on his cheeks when he falls asleep in the backseat.
The sticky fingerprints he leaves on every surface. The way he calls me “mama” in that sweet, sleepy voice first thing in the morning.
How do you let go of all of that?
I know people will say he is going to a better place. That he won’t suffer anymore. That heaven will welcome him with open arms.
But right now, all I can think is: I don’t want him in heaven. I want him here. With me. In this messy, imperfect, painful world where at least I can hold him, touch him, hear him.
They tell me I need to make the most of the time we have left. Take pictures. Make memories. Fill every day with love. I want to. God, I want to.
But sometimes, the grief is so heavy I can’t breathe. Sometimes I look at him and all I can see is the countdown. Every laugh is tinged with sorrow, every hug with the knowledge that one day it will be the last.
People say I’m strong, but I’m not. I am shattered. I am breaking in places no one can see. I smile for him, I hold his hand, I sing him songs, but inside I am screaming.
I don’t know how to live without him. I don’t want to learn.
So today, I signed a paper I never wanted to see. A paper that says when his heart gives out, we will not intervene. We will let him go. We will let him rest.
And I will try, somehow, to survive in a world where his laughter is only a memory.
I don’t know how to do that. But I know one thing: I will carry him with me. Always.
Forever five. Forever my little boy. Forever my heart.