Support

I wake up at four in the morning overcome with grief. It is a physical grief that causes my heart to pound, my hands to shake, my body to sweat, my mind to race. I have been through this before and by now know enough to turn to posts from my online support group of grieving parents. Reading other posts I learn how other parents cope, what to expect. I am just a little more than six weeks into this. My grief, these physical episodes, they say, will happen throughout the entire first year, and for some people, into years two, three, and beyond.

My aunt died in her early fifties, and my grandmother, my aunt's mother, had unexpected spells of crying, sadness, grief until the day she passed away many years later. There is a special bond between parent and child that is different from any other relationship. No one can understand what I am going through unless they have lost a child themselves. Sadly, there are hundreds of parents who belong to the support group and several have lost more than one child. For the few of us who have lost our only child, there is a special sadness.

The support group talks about "soft" days and "hard" days. Soft days are those days where the grief retreats, temporarily. Hard days will hopefully happen less and less frequently as time passes. The one thing that is constant, is the understanding that parents never really get past losing a child. The loss will eventually be absorbed into the parent's life, but life, then, is forever changed. Most parents will adapt, and go on to live full lives. But those lives will be drastically different than planned, for there will always be an empty place at holiday tables, there will always be one person missing in family photos.

I am so greatly saddened that these kind people I have met online have experienced the worst nightmare a parent can face. But I also am so very, very grateful for their guidance, love and unconditional support, for it is through them that I learn to navigate the first tentative steps into the uncharted waters of life without my son.