One Year Later: A Mother's Raw Grief as Anniversary of Son's Death Approaches

Grief doesn’t follow a timeline, and Emilie Kiser is living that truth as she approaches one of the hardest dates on her calendar. On Saturday, May 10, the 27-year-old took to TikTok to share something she’s been wrestling with in private: the weight of nearly a year without her son Trigg, who died on May 18, 2025, at age 3 in a preventable drowning accident.

What struck her most wasn’t just the sadness—it was the shock of time itself.“This month has snuck up on us in a way we could have never anticipated,”she said, her voice breaking as she described the disorientation of watching a year pass since losing a child. For anyone who’s experienced profound loss, that statement cuts deep. You think you’re moving forward, and then suddenly the calendar flips to that month, that date, and you realize nothing has actually changed—the person is still gone.

Kiser didn’t sugarcoat what that’s meant for her physically and mentally. She talked about exhaustion so deep it pulls her toward bed all day, about her health becoming collateral damage when grief takes over, about the strange disconnect of trying to show up for her family while feeling hollowed out. But she’s not hiding entirely. Her husband Brady, their son Theodore“Teddy,”and visiting family members will spend May doing things that honor Trigg—visiting his favorite places, reading to him, building a space to remember. It’s grief work, the kind that doesn’t fix anything but maybe makes the unbearable slightly less isolating.

In August 2025, Kiser had written on Instagram that she takes“full accountability as Trigg’s mother”and acknowledged a permanent pool fence could have saved his life. That kind of honesty—the refusal to look away from her own role—speaks to someone trying to transform tragedy into something that might protect another family. It doesn’t ease her pain, but it’s a way of giving Trigg’s death meaning beyond the loss.

Taking a break from social media this month feels like the right call. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is step back, let your body and heart rest, and honor someone you loved more than words can say. Her followers got it. The comments poured in with recognition: vulnerability shared is vulnerability witnessed.