" Denise Collins would be the first to tell you that there are no words. She never knew pain—not like this. Pain so endless, so agonizing but so serene that if she stood in one place long enough, her knees would buckle. And if she didn’t focus on something else quickly, she would faint. In silence, Denise stared down at her child. Half of his face was gone, around the cheekbone, a sunken pit where his left eye used to be, but she didn’t see that. She didn’t see the missing pieces, the severed right hand, the broken bones in his legs. All she saw was her son. Her prince. Her little man—dead.

She leaned over gradually and pulled him up, supporting Jimmy’s body against the strength of her chest. There was no life in his arms as they hung over hers. He weighed next to nothing as she rested his head against her shoulder. It was their last embrace, their good-bye hug. A soundless sob escaped her lips. Denise wanted to call to him even though she knew he had gone where he could not call her back. She cradled him in her arms, oscillating to the rhythm of a song only she could hear.

A mother and a son. "

― D.E. Eliot , Ruined