Losing A Child
What are common emotions after losing a child?
When a child dies, you will feel all the emotions that people feel in grief - enormous sadness and anger. There's nothing that feels more unjust in the world than losing a child, and it feels very unnatural for a child to die before their parents. As parents, we have feelings of protection, as that our job to protect our child and maybe we should have been able to save them from their illness or maybe we should have been able to save them from the accident or whatever took their life. You need to just know that those feelings are common, and as much as we want to be there and protect our child from everything in the world, sometimes in life we cannot protect them from death.
How can I heal my marriage after losing a child?
Losing a child affects relationships dramatically. At times it may make them stronger, but at times it may also devastate them. It's a time to realize you do need support and that you need help getting through this. People are on different paths when it comes to grief. Eventually in a couples' life there will be the issue of having sex again. All of those things become different factors and we're in very different places when we feel sexual again, and when we feel it's okay to have happiness in the relationship. We also may try to get back to the relationship we had either before the child or with the child. You're never going to get back to that again. You're going to have to create a new relationship with each other that now includes this loss. But families can make it, they can do it, as hard as it is.
How do I talk to my spouse about the death of our child?
How do I explain the death of our child to our other children?
In explaining death to your other children, you want to do it in a group, but you also want to do it individually because they're going to be different ages, and you'll want to explain it differently for the different ages. Also tell them that their brothers and sisters are going to feel differently about this loss, and that they probably also had different feelings about the loss. Also to help them understand, they may have been angry with the sibling, they may have been upset with the sibling, and tell them that did not cause the death. And to explain to them that all kids get mad at each other and play with each other, and to help them not to have a sense of guilt about things they were doing in normal play.
How do we get through the holidays without our child?
When parents have a child, one of the many things that they look forward to is holidays with their children, so the idea that you have lost a child and are now faced with going through the holidays can be deeply overwhelming. If you have other children, it's important that you continue the holidays for their sake. Include the loss of your child and talk about the loss of your child, and yet for your other children go on with it. If there are no other children, you or your husband or your wife may just need to take some time without the ritual of the holiday. If you are enormously sad, don't feel the pressure to cheer up for the holidays. No one expects you to have a happy holiday after the loss of a child.
Are there ways to memorialize our child at home?
There are many ways to memorialize your child at home. Things such as having their pictures around, talking about the joy that they brought to your life, sharing fond memories of them, remembering them, and keeping them alive in our heart is the best way we memorialize our children.
Will I ever get over the death of my child?
Parents wonder if they will ever get over the death of a child. You will not get over the death of your child, you will learn to live with the loss of your child. The child will always be in your heart. You will always feel an awkwardness when someone asks you how many children you have - do you name that child? Do you have two children or three children? So you will learn to live with that loss, you will always keep that child as part of your family. But it's not something we recover from. A child is a part of our family, living or dead and they're a part of who we are. And in their memory we learn to go on and to continue life, but they will always stick with us.
What support is available to parents who have lost a child?
There's wonderful resources out there now for parents who have lost a child. There's great organizations like the M.I.S.S. Foundation, and there's also a number of other organizations that have simultaneous camps. You go to the camp with your family, and your children go in one track, where they're dealing with the loss at their age level, and you're also dealing with the loss and the grief as an adult. So those are wonderful to explore and your local hospice can tell you about them or they're easily found on the internet.
