The Funeral for the Eternal 8

When I wrote *Another Headline, Another Family Gone* last month, I didn’t anticipate the way that seeing the funerals for the eight children who lost their lives to gun violence would stay with me. Or the way I would keep thinking about how their mothers are supposed to go on after this. Christina Snow and Keosha Pugh are those mothers, and on Mother’s Day, they laid to rest their babies, who lost their lives to Shamar Elkins on Easter Sunday.

The children are now being called the Eternal 8.

Jayla Elkins (3) Shayla Elkins (5) Kayla Pugh (6) Layla Pugh (7) Mar’Kaydon Pugh (10) Sariahh Snow (11) Khedarrion Snow (6) Braylon Snow (5)

I started seeing funeral clips online, not fully knowing what I was looking at initially. But honestly, when it’s a child’s funeral, you don’t really need details to understand that something horrific happened. The second you see a tiny coffin, flowers surrounding a child who should still be here, your body understands before your mind even catches up. Something has gone deeply wrong.

Photo by panyawat auitpol on Unsplash.

So by the time the full clips started coming across my feed, I was devastated. Because when I initially wrote the blog to process my outrage, even though I knew there would eventually be funerals, I didn’t allow myself to think that far ahead. I think part of me refused to. Because it felt too cruel. Too heavy. Too impossible to fully process.

But refusing to think about it didn’t stop it from happening.

And it did happen.

The Eternal 8 were sent off to the afterlife surrounded by love, community, balloons, stuffed animals, tears, prayers, and heartbreak so heavy you could feel it through a phone screen. It was beautiful to witness the outpouring of love, but devastating because none of it should have been necessary in the first place.

That’s the part that keeps sitting in my chest.

This wasn’t a tragedy caused by illness or some unavoidable accident. These children did not simply “pass away.” Their lives were stolen from them by someone who was supposed to protect them. Someone they trusted. Someone who tucked them in at night, took pictures with them, laughed with them, showed up in family photos and Easter church pictures like every other parent trying to build memories with their children.

And now two mothers are left carrying the kind of grief that permanently reshapes a person. Christina Snow lost seven children. Her sister, Keosha Pugh, lost her son, Mar’Kaydon Pugh. And while the scale of the loss was different, there is no “small” version of burying your child. Two sisters forced to bury their babies together on Mother’s Day. Just typing that sentence feels unreal.

Because how is a family supposed to survive something like this? Truthfully, I don’t know if I would be able to. The loss has completely devastated an entire family, and you can feel that devastation in every clip, every prayer, every person crying as those tiny caskets passed by. This wasn’t only the loss of eight children. It was the destruction of futures, routines, traditions, birthdays, graduations, holidays, inside jokes, and all the little moments families build their lives around without even realizing it.

I think that’s part of why this has hit me so hard personally. My children have always been my source of strength. The reason I kept going through things that probably should have broken me. So much of my survival was never just about me, it was about them. Wanting them safe. Wanting them happy. Wanting them to have better than I did.

So when I look at Christina Snow and Keosha Pugh, my heart genuinely breaks for them in a way I can’t fully put into words. Because I cannot imagine waking up every day and having to keep breathing after this level of loss. I cannot imagine walking back into a quiet house, seeing empty bedrooms, untouched toys, little shoes that will never be worn again.

And yet somehow, they have to find a way to keep going.

That’s the part that haunts me. Because after the funeral ends, after people stop posting, after the headlines disappear, these mothers still have to live in the aftermath of something unimaginable. A grief so massive that I honestly don’t think most people can even comprehend it until it’s standing directly in front of them.

Photo by Judy Beth Morris on Unsplash.

And maybe that’s why those funeral clips shattered me the way they did. Because for a moment, the internet stopped feeling numb. The story stopped feeling distant. It became painfully human.

Eight children should still be here.

And there is nothing about that which will ever feel normal to me.