Grieving the Loss of a Child

When my children were born, the fear of losing them also was born. I don't think a day went by for their first 20 years that I did not worry.

I am beyond moved by people who live and find a way to thrive having survived that loss.

"Thinking about my children is like air. A lifetime of thinking about them will only end when I reach the end of my life."

That quote is from Yiyun Li's amazing book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow".

It is a love letter to her two sons who both died by suicide, 6 years apart, at ages 16 and 19.

I first read her story in the New Yorker last year and recently read the book. I was moved beyond words. I bow down to her and her suffering. I honor her. I learn from her.

Besides from being an amazing writer, she offers her wisdom and her suffering in a way that deeply touched my heart. 

Reading her words, which are emissions from a deep place within, is a holy experience. Here are excerpts that greatly moved me:

"Sometimes people ask me where I am in the grieving process, and I wonder whether they understand anything at all about losing someone. How lonely the dead would feel if the living would just stand up from that shadow clap, their hands dusting their pants, and say to themselves into the world, I am done with grieving. 

I don't want an end point to my sorrow. 

The death of a child is not a heat wave or a snowstorm. Nor an obstacle race to rush through and win. Nor an acute or chronic illness to recover from. What is grief, but a word, a shortcut, a simplification of something much larger than that word? 

There is no now and then; no now and later; there is only now and now and now. 

Never feel that you are obliged to show your pain to the world very few people deserve to see your tears. 

Marianne Moore wrote in her poem "Silence": The deepest feelings always shows itself in silence. Not in silence, but restraint.

I do believe that we learned to suffer better. We become more discerning in our suffering. There are things that are worth suffering for. We also become less rigid in our suffering; suffused, one's being no longer resists."

Here is to all the parents who have lost children.