On death.

There is no greater sadness than to bury a child.

Period.

There just isn’t.

There is no grief more palpable, no grief in which the constant mantra is “What if…”, or grief that looks forward the way the death of a child does.  A child’s death is unlike any other grief process.

I know many parents who have buried their children.

I know, too personally, the swirling sense of chaos that emerges after the death of a child.  The way the world appears incongruent; almost mocking.

How could anyone pump gas – my child is dead.

What is this inane shit on the news? My child is dead, don’t they know that?  

Who can order coffee, or dare drop off drycleaning?  How is the world still spinning?  Doesn’t it know?  My child is dead; I am burying my child.

Somehow, the world doesn’t stop when a child dies, yet you demand that it do.  Because it should.  Because my child is gone; he was here, and now he is gone and everything and everyone should stop because how can anyone go on when I can’t?  When something so heinous and cruel has happened?

And if you must, must, must, be forced to live on this planet after your child dies, then of course you must devote your life to finding the reason why it happened.  Because there must be a reason.  Because things like this don’t “just happen”.

And you pore over medical records.  You recall every detail, even the most minute detail, to find out why.  Why?  There is a reason.  If I look hard enough, if I spend several days with his medical records and on google, I will find the reason why.  Children do not just die for no reason.  There must be a reason for this to happen because this just doesn’t just happen.

Eventually, that investigation leads to blame.  The doctors missed something.  The nurses didn’t warn me.  The help I sought was too little, too late.  It is their fault.  It is my doctor’s fault.  It is a family member’s fault. 

It is MY fault.

Wait.  No.  That’s it.  It is my fault.  It is my fault because I didn’t see the warning symptoms. It is my fault because I didn’t get him the right help quickly enough.  It is my fault.  This is all my fault.  I see it so clearly; it is my fault.  I killed my child; if it weren’t for me, he would be alive.  Maybe I should be dead too.

With too many pills in hand, or a gun placed carefully at the foot of the bed, I have stood looking in the mirror and considered that narrative too.  This was all my fault, and I shouldn’t be alive because he isn’t.  I failed.  I can tell you many reasons why I deserved to die.

Because I remember life “before” and “after”; the death marks the beginning of Life After; and Life Before seems like some kind of weird dream where whatever problems I had were meaningless because My Child was alive.

At some point, breath returns to the body.  At some point, it’s been six months, or nine months, or three weeks, and something triggers some sense of normalcy.  You are thrust back into reality, even if you are kicking and screaming.  What you are left with is a type of sadness only those who have buried a child truly know.

Time passes.  And still you hear the whispers, sometimes from people you care about.  You should have done more.  It is your fault that he is dead, you know.  

And you continue to condemn yourself.  They’re right.  They’re right.

Years later, if you get the right therapy and if you truly work to take care of yourself and integrate the Loss into your Life, you can become functional again.  The scar of your lost child never heals and your life is never the way it was Before.  It becomes new in the After.  You celebrate future birthdays in the After.  You tell yourself, “He would have been a teenager today” or “He would have turned 30”, or “I wonder what his wife would have looked like.”  That’s the forward-grief that losing a child gives to you.  It is a sickening, heartbreaking gift.

And much, much later….much MUCH later…you forgive yourself.

You remind yourself how much you truly loved your child.  You suddenly remember all of the good you did for him, how much you wanted to protect him, how much of your life you gave to him for as long as he was yours.  You look the regrets in the eye and own them.  I wish I had gone to the hospital sooner. I wish I had gone to a different doctor, or a different hospital.…you look at those regrets and so many others, and you forgive yourself.  You remember that you did the best you could, and if you are a person of faith, perhaps you tell yourself that regardless of the choices you made that day, the outcome would have been the same.

You work to find the good that only God can bring out of the most unspeakable tragedy.  And sometimes, you find it.  You find the lesson; you tell yourself that you are spurred to action because of this event.  You forcefully bring, as they say, “beauty from the ashes”.

No matter what you tell yourself, however, what beauty you eventually create is never worth the price that you paid.  The scab that holds together every ounce of pain, sorrow, and guilt, is a fragile one.

And then, when someone many years later scrapes off that scab in judgment, to proclaim, “It’s all your fault, you know.  *I* never would have done what you did.  You did it wrong.  You have the blood of your child on your hands” it’s….

Hmm.

It’s soul crushing, because in those moments, the years of work you  have done to integrate the tragedy in your life comes undone.  Because those words, those deeply powerful words, strike at the heart of the worst kind of pain.  Because those words in some way echo the words that you have tried to banish from yourself so that you can live each day, honoring the memory of your child without becoming consumed with the devastating loss of your child.

This is why you  never do this.

This is why, if you meet a grieving mother, the last thing you do is criticize what she did or did not do.  This is why you believe, as I do, that nearly every mother on the planet loves their child, does the best for their child, fights for their child.  That fight may look different to different people, but most mothers would do anything to protect their child.

The judgmental nightmare of some, I hope, stops.  Now that you look in the mirror and know what it is like to live with that kind of guilt, either appropriate guilt or otherwise, you have to know what that feels like.

And for what it’s worth, and if you are reading…I don’t blame you for your son’s death any more than I blame myself for mine anymore.  I would never presume to tell you what I think you should have done differently and then tell you that the blood of your son is on your hands.  It is not.  It is not your fault.  The way you handled your son was the best you could do.  You gave him the best care he could get.  You made tough choices about what type of care you thought was right, in the same way I made the best choices for my sons on what I believed to be right for them.  I would not judge you on what you did or did not do.  You did the best for your child, born of your flesh, and one that you deeply loved.  He is gone, and it is not your fault that he is gone.

Whatever you think you would have done differently…I did my best and so did you.  I wish you peace on your unspeakable journey of the very worst type of sadness.