Five little letters arranged into such a powerfully painful word. Grief surrounds many things in life but they all have one thing in common...a deep heart attachment to something other than ourselves...a pet, a grandparent, a home, a spouse, a friend, a job, a parent...there are many more. As I reflect back over the years, I believe there is one kind of grief that lives in a category all it’s own—The grief of losing a child.
I’ve watched people close to me lose children in all stages of life...miscarriage, infants, toddlers, school-age, teenagers, college age, and adult. They all have one thing in common. A grief that cannot be cured because a piece of our very being has been torn from our life. Parents and children have a bond like no other. Regardless of time, distance, disagreements, lifestyle, misunderstandings, this bond cannot be severed. Even when one wants to disown the other, it is not possible to completely detach oneself from that part of our being that is entwined in the other person. There will always and forever be a tie there.
Time can pass and it gets easier to keep a mind busy with other things; it gets easier to hide the pain inside; it gets easier to pretend you’ve “moved on with your life”...but that piece that was ripped out of you can never be replaced, or ignored, or forgotten.
Treat others with gentle kindness, they may be hiding a grief that they cannot fully express and can never fully escape.
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