A song for a child is the assignment with the highest bar in this form. The room must be still. The language must be small. The song must not perform grief — it must hold the child. We treat this with the seriousness that no other song requires; the bereavement-doula trainers on our WAR Room set the bar, and we write to it.
What this kind of song holds
A memorial song for a child holds the specific child — the favorite shirt, the way they laughed, the question they asked you that you remember. It holds the years they had and the years that should have been. It does not try to make sense of loss; it lets the child stay specific.
What to put in the intake
Give us the small things. Their nickname. Their habit. The thing they were good at that nobody else would have noticed. The one moment you knew them most. We use what you give us with full care; nothing surfaces in the lyric that you did not give us.