A year ago I was a mother to be and I didn't even know it. I wish I had known. I wish I could have savoured that day. I will never again know a day that potentially innocent, hopeful and filled with bliss.

In December last year, I had a son, Jack. He was delivered by an emergency C-section when I was 35 weeks pregnant, in Boston. Jack was sick though. Sick enough that even the best doctors in the United States could not save him at that stage. Although he was over six pounds and alert with a strong heart, his little bowel had twisted and died. He lived just 5.5 hours.

And my husband and I became parents. But we were parents faced with the most unbearable choices any parent could ever imagine. We held our precious son in our arms as life slipped away from him. And life as we had known it before slipped away as well with beautiful Jack's last breaths, with the last fluttering of his long lashes over his blue eyes.

On December 8, 2008, I joined a terrible group – a group no one would ever wish or expect to join. I became a childless mother. A week later, we returned to Bermuda – to a house full of baby gear and baby joy – alone and devastated. Alone in a way we could never have foreseen.

Losing a child is a pain so great that no one should ever know it. You would not wish it on your worst enemy.It goes against all nature. It is a loss immeasurable. Don't imagine it. You cannot. The pain and grief exceeds the even the human capacity to imagine.

I was to learn, however, that my terrible experience, that our tragedy – mine and my husband's and Jack's – was far from unique. The pain of losing a child touches far too many. In the United Kingdom, twice as many babies are stillborn or lost in the first month of life than the number of people who die in road accidents every year. Seventeen children a day are lost.

In Bermuda, the statistics are cloudy at best. My Jack does not count here because he died in Boston, although his care there was just one day of the 240-odd I was pregnant. Stillborn babies do not count, although I do not know how anyone dares say that to their parents. At the end of the day, even one baby lost is too many, I can assure you.

I have found new friends among the group of mothers who share my pain. I know the names of their children and think of them almost as often as I do my Jack – which is every day, all day, all the time. Jack is not alone. He is with Helena and Jake and Sparrow and Mariah and Faith and Matthew and Ronnie to name just a few.

When you carry this terrible grief, you meet others whose stories might otherwise be hidden. I share my story and learn that the woman at the funeral home lost a child, that my OB lost a child, that my grandmother lost a child to the worst kind of incompetence. An old acquaintance reaches out to me because she lost her first son. A circle opens as my heart is closing down.

Those who lose babies are not the only mothers hurting on Mother's Day, however. Mothers lose their children in many ways. Seventeen mothers lost their children to road accidents in Bermuda last year. Too many mothers lost their children to murder. Others lost children to illnesses. Some lose much wanted children to miscarriage before they even get a chance to connect with them. Many mothers are in pain this Mother's Day; a terrible pain and often a terribly lonely pain.

If you know a mother who lost a child this year or any year, try to remember them this weekend. Say their child's name. You would not believe how much it matters. Give them a hug if you see them. You could not know how much they might need it. Remember in your happiness that life has many jagged edges as well.

Mothers lose children and the grief is overwhelming. I can tell you from the many hours I have spent in support groups that many attempt suicide, almost all know depression, and no one ever, ever, ever forgets the lost children. They are in our lives, our hearts and our minds forever. They are invisible companions and their loss is never truly overcome.

Yet often these mothers feel they have to hide their grief in a culture that values strength and getting "over it" more than it does compassion. Some mothers even are subject to the cold, cruel judgment of others in their time or unspeakable pain.

Joan Didion wrote in her poignant memoir about the pain and confusion of deep grief following the loss of her husband of 40 years, "The Year of Magical Thinking", that people who have never known this scale of loss have no concept of it. You cannot anticipate it and you cannot "get over it", she writes: "Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we confront the experience of meaningless itself."

So spare a moment on Mother's Day for those who live with this heavy absence, offer a prayer for their children, even as you cherish your own.