JADES Network

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Will you ever ‘get over’ the death of your child?

What a joyful family celebration—the marriage of my lovely first-born, twin daughter Charlotte to Greg, a kind, intelligent, outdoor enthusiast. The ceremony included familiar wedding traditions, including one that is peculiar to our family.

I carried a bridesmaid’s bouquet as my son Keith escorted me down the aisle. Before taking my seat, I placed the bouquet on the altar next to a picture of my daughter Alicea, a pajama-clad three-year-old, frozen in time on Christmas morning, hugging her new Teddy Bear. I lit a candle in her memory.

Alicea’s picture, her bridesmaid’s bouquet and a memorial candle also graced a table at her sister Renee’s wedding five years earlier.

To some, who never endured the death of a child, our family’s memorial ritual during a joyful family occasion might seem inappropriate. After all, Alicea has been dead for 22 years. This May we should have celebrated her 26th birthday, but she drowned in a neighbor’s unsecured swimming pool on May 27, 1988, about a week before her fourth birthday.

Other bereaved parents would understand. It’s common, and normal, to track the imagined life of a dead child. It’s a death out of order. When we bury our child we also bury the future goodnight kisses and bedtime stories, their senior prom, their high school and college graduations, their wedding, our future grandchildren and all the other significant events we will never share. Our memorial rituals acknowledge that their brief lives meant something—that they haven’t been forgotten.

In the early days of my grief, when the pain was raw and searing, I remember telling a grief counselor who worked with a local chapter of The Compassionate Friends (a national support group for bereaved parents http://www.thecompassionatefriends.org) that I didn’t think I could survive such intense sorrow. She, a bereaved parent herself, said, “You’re right; the person you were before Alicea died will not survive. You have two choices. You can become a bitter person, or you can become a better person. But you can never go back to being the same person you were before your loss.”

To honor Alicea’s memory I try to educate others about child safety issues, especially drowning prevention. I had a state-wide swimming pool barrier code passed in Pennsylvania. I served as a Compassionate Friends phone friend to newly bereaved parents. And I never look away or try to change the subject when someone in pain needs to talk, or just cry. I think this helped me become a better person.

To newly bereaved parents I want to say, don’t hesitate to reach out for support. Give yourself permission to grieve on your own terms. Most of all, don’t let others, who have no idea what you’re going through, impose a timetable on your grief by suggesting that you should be “over this by now.” You don’t “get over” the death of your child, you go through it.

Time will blunt the intense pain you feel. The searing anguish will gradually give way to a dull ache and eventually you will find peace and happiness in life again. Best of all, you will enjoy the precious time spent with loved ones as you never have before.

Sure, I cried during Charlotte and Greg’s wedding, but they were tears of joy, not sadness. For I knew, perhaps better than most parents, what a privilege it was to watch my daughters grow to beautiful womanhood, to remember their senior prom, high school and college graduations and to sing Sunrise, Sunset during their weddings. I’m happily looking forward to Keith’s college graduation and to reading bedtime stories with my future grandchildren.

Bev Payton