Losing a child...

It is a reality that few people can understand unless they have lost a child themselves and that's not something any of us who have been unwillingly drafted into this club want for any other parent.  At the beginning, we struggled just to breathe.  We honestly feel that our hearts will soon stop beating.  We sometimes secretly wish that it would happen and allow us to escape from the pain that grips our hearts and our lives.

We know that life will never be the same even when well meaning friends try to comfort us by telling us it will all be okay.  We know they only mean well.  We also know that it is a lie they unwillingly pass along in an attempt to make us feel better and to say what they truly hope is true.  But it isn't.  It will never be okay again.  Yes, we will survive.  That's what parents who bury a child do.  They survive but they lose a part of their soul when they leave the cemetery and their child remains only as a memory.

For those of us who are Christians, we know that the grave is not the end.  We know that one day we will see our child again.  We know that our loved one is in heaven with God and we rejoice that this is true.  But there is a great span between earth and heaven and it may be many years before we too arrive at the gates of heaven to be reunited with our child and see Jesus face to face.

Losing a child changes us and even when we begin to adjust to the new normal, a part of our hearts are wounded forever and we can't help but be changed.  Most of us don't try to explain it fully to those who haven't visited their child in the cemetery and laid flowers on the grave where we ourselves would like to lay with our arms outstretched in an attempt to hold the memories even closer to our hearts.  We press on.  We even eventually laugh again and we see things in this world that are better because our loved one was here.  And when we feel we are over the hump and can travel outside into the world without fear of sadness sweeping over us like a wave...we see something in a store that reminds us of our child or we hear a song or smell something that brings memories flooding back and we are defenseless for the emotional floodgates that are opened again.  And so it goes.  We do the best we can do and we accept the fact that losing a child changes us, not just for the first year, but for life.  And we put one foot in front of the other...and we go on trying never, ever to forget a single thing about our child and thanking God daily for the gift he shared so graciously with us here on this earth.