You will survive!

I wrote this for parents who lost a child, I hope it will give you the strength to carry on.

Photo by Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash

I am here today to tell you that you are going to survive. You are facing a hard path of mourning and some days it will knock you off your feet. There will be days that you feel you are making progress and then, out of nowhere, it will hit you all over again. These days will hit you so hard that you will physically feel weak. Nothing in your life will make any sense and not even the fact that you have other children and people who love you will mean anything to you. Your mind cannot reach further than the hell you are in.

The only way to get through this to a place where you can live again is to talk to someone about the turmoil and utter hell you experience. Take one day at a time, and sometimes just one moment at a time. Hold on tight because I assure you it will pass. With time the dreadful moments will become fewer and further between. You will reach the point where your mind won’t constantly be filled with agony. And that day will be such a shock to you. You will feel guilty that you had no thought about your child. That is only natural. Everything about grief is normal. You are finding yourself in an abnormal situation. Nothing about it can be compared to anything else you have ever experienced. There is no point of reference for this tragedy.

The first few years will be the worst you can imagine. I will not lie and say it will be over soon. However, eventually, it will get to a point where you can live with it and accept the fact. Your precious child is always with you and I don’t care what anyone says, that is something I know deep in my heart. And don’t let anyone tell you that you have to feel better or they can’t come to rest. That is utter nonsense. They are in the spiritual realm now, and their destiny will not be influenced by your grief. Grief has no timeline and you should take all the time you need to heal.

We can’t do this on our own. For a time I was under the impression that I could get through this without any help. But one day I realized if I didn’t get professional help I would go completely insane. The pain was like cancer eating away at me from the inside. I started seeing a psychologist who used cognitive behavioral therapy to treat his patients. That saved my life, along with regular meditation. The unbearable pain of losing a child doesn’t just go away, you have to work at it and feel the need to heal. I know that at this moment you don’t want to heal, the thought of that is akin to being a traitor to his or her memory.

How could you want to live a normal happy life while your child is in the ground or a box of ashes? Well, I assure you that day will come. One day you will be happy again. You will never forget or stop loving your precious child, but you will be able to look back at this anguish and be surprised at how far you have come. That is a promise my dear friend in grief. Your heart will heal and one thing that helped me to this point is that I know, one day when my time is done here, Emile will be at the gates to welcome me home. But, while I am still here I will make him proud of me.

Namaste