A memoir · Available now
I Did Not Lose Them
A Father's Journey Through Grief, Faith, and the Hope of Reunion
One December day, I buried one son in the morning and held his twin brother as he died that afternoon. This is the story of the thirty-five years since — and of where I have come to know, without any doubt, my sons are.
I did not lose them. I know exactly where they are. And I am going there too.
About the book
Written from inside the grief, not the far side of it.
This is not a book about getting over the death of a child. It is a book about learning to carry it — and about the hope that the carrying is not the end of the story.
In 1991, Troy and his wife Mychel's twin sons, Kristopher and Kyler, died within days of their birth. I Did Not Lose Them tells that story plainly and honestly, and then keeps going — through the words that wound and the ones that heal, through prayers answered with a no, through a marriage that held, through the long calendar that grief keeps in the body year after year.
Troy writes in a spare, confessional voice — never clinical, never dressed up. He does not hand you these pages from a safe and finished place; he is still in it, and says so. It is a book for the grieving, from someone who is one.
Who it's for
- Parents who have buried a child — and fathers, especially, who were told to be the strong one.
- Anyone carrying a grief that the world keeps trying to measure or hurry.
- Those who want to help someone grieving, and are afraid of saying the wrong thing.
- Readers of faith — and readers of none. You do not have to believe as Troy does to be welcome here.
What's inside
- Thirteen chapters, plus a chapter written for the people who love a grieving parent.
- After the fourth chapter, each one closes with a few words for the grieving, a verse to anchor to, and a question to sit with.
- Room to write — wide margins and a blank page left in each chapter, on purpose.
There is one word I have never made my peace with: lost. People say it kindly. But I did not lose my sons. I have never once not known where they are. Their tiny bodies died. Their spirits did not. That is not a thing I hope; it is a thing I know.
From Chapter 8 — The Long Calendar
Available now
The book is here.
I Did Not Lose Them is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle ebook.
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The author
M. Troy Hudson
M. Troy Hudson is the author of I Did Not Lose Them and the founder of Hudson Haus.
In 1991, his twin sons, Kristopher and Kyler, died within days of their birth. Nine years later, his wife, Mychel, died at thirty-one. I Did Not Lose Them is the book he waited more than three decades to write — not from the far side of grief, but from inside the faith that taught him his sons and their mother were not lost, only ahead of him.
He writes plainly, as a man who has done the grieving he describes. He lives in Florida with his wife, Amy, for the peace the year-round green and the ocean bring them — and counts a large family: eight children in this life, as he puts it, with two more to rear in the next.