How to Comfort Someone Whose Child Has Died

Chettie blowing a kiss. Chester died April 1, 1999, at the age of 21. It could have been yesterday.

HOW TO COMFORT SOMEONE WHOSE CHILD HAS DIED
by Susan Dunn
Look for my book on the death of a child due to come out next year.

When a friend suffers the loss of a child, we don't know how to comfort them. Our first thought is usually, "I don't know what to say." When a child is lost, we all suffer, and it's particularly hard for other parents to deal with.

"Friends would cross the street to avoid me," one client told me.

What to say and how to help the grieving parents is a challenge.

I had first-hand experience with this when my son died several years ago. Let me share some thoughts from that perspective.

There are some things that aren't helpful:

•Asking the person what you can do to help, or any question, is beyond their capacity. People devastated by grief can't make the simplest decision, and they still have to make burial arrangements, etc. They are only capable of going through the motions. Nothing more. One foot in front of the other.

•Saying most of the things they say in movies --he's in a better place, it was God's will, your memories will comfort you, time will heal. They make no sense at the time. The person is trying to figure out something incomprehensible and doesn't have space to fit in other ideas.

•Assuming the grief-stricken person needs to express their emotions. It's all the person can do to contain the emotions. It's self-protection to shut down, and it's necessary.

•Trying ... trying anything. The grieving person feels the emotional pull when they're already on their last nerve and have nothing to give ... 'this person is trying to make me feel better, make me cry, make me explain something. I'm supposed to do something and I can't.' It's a fragile state.

•Thinking the grieving person needs to do something. To the grieving person, it feels like pressure, it makes absolutely no sense, and often it isn't 'needed' anyway. "You must eat something," elicits "Why?" You can't imagine how you're bouncing pebbles off a distant planet. Words, I'm sorry to say, really aren't of much use.

•References to other deaths. It's just a time not to do that, like sending a book about coping with the death of a child. The person needs not to be a part of a group -- widows who've lost husbands, mothers who've lost sons ... It needs to stand alone.

What, then, can you do?

Burying your own child has been called "a perversion of nature," and is that difficult to get your mind around. What parent has ever considered having to do this? Most of us care more about our children than life itself, and we cannot afford to entertain that thought, so there is no preparation. It's something we sincerely hope will happen to someone else, not us, if it must happen.

We expect our parents to die in our lifetime; it's difficult, but we've been expecting it.

Here are some of the things that helped me through. I can't say they comforted me, as for a time there was no way to comfort me, and I guess that's a point to be made. You don't even want to be comforted. What you want is your child back.

Understand I'm speaking from my personal experience. It's a terrible insult to imagine what someone else is feeling at this time, or what might help.

•My younger sister came to the Memorial Service and just made small talk. When she left, to go back home, she shook her head and said, "Oh Susan." She left a tape by Ian Tyson on my bedside table ... rock with me Jesus help me bear this heavy load, don't let her slip, don't let her slide ... all cowboys cross the Great Divide.

•After the dinner after the Service, folks came back to my house. My niece sat beside me and stroked my hair while she talked with everyone, so I didn't have to.

•A colleague at work met me coming out of the elevator my first day back to work. He looked up, then looked down with tears in his eyes and said, "I don't know what to say," and walked away with his shoulders bent. He had a child the same age as mine. It was thoughtful of him not to stick around and have me feel the need to comfort him.

•My friend who said, "Give me a list of people to call. I'll tell them for you."

•My boss said, when I returned to work, "The only reason I'm letting you be here is that it's maybe slightly better than being home." He gave me little things to do, to occupy my mind, but nothing requiring judgment.

•My twin sister called me every 6 weeks and said she was flying out for a visit. (Didn't ask, said.) She would show up at the house and just putter ... cook, clean, garden ... She didn't disturb me.

•When she answered the phone, I heard her say, "She can't talk now. She's seeking the mercy of sleep."

•My friend, who'd lost her 8 month old son ... when I asked her "How do I live with this?" she said, "I don't know. Yours is different. Mine was [just a baby] but yours was [21] and the longer you have them the worse it is." What a magnanimous statement.

•My friend who wrote, "From now on, for me, every tree will be missing a leaf."

•My son's friend who told me, when she heard about it, "That's really [expletive]."

•Between visits, my sister sent me homemade chocolate chip cookies, something very symbolic between the two of us. Mother ... home ... happier times. They arrived in shoe boxes, wrapped in plain brown paper. It's a time to be basic.

•The people who talked about how wonderful my son was, only at a distance ... by email, or letters.

•The friend who gave me a gift certificate for 10 massages.

•People who would, and still do, speak his name.

•Friends who remember the anniversary of his death. For most of us, it will never recede in time. It could be yesterday. It could even be today.

In the acute state of grief, the person can't think, and there's no emotional space. What isn't occupied by grief, is occupied by anger, which the person is trying not to vent against an innocent person. Just be around them, lovingly. Words aren't absorbed. There's authenticity in saying "I don't know what to say," when you don't.

Avoid trying to pull their emotions out, or to put yours on them. (Some people do express them.) Don't make any cognitive or emotional demands. If you can, remove cognitive tasks, i.e., tell them you're picking them up for dinner at Chili's, Tuesday at 6, and to wear jeans.

A gentle touch means a lot. Accept how they're being at the time. Understand that for them to respond is asking them to produce energy they don't have. Even the most gracious of us are hard-put to be gracious at such a time.

Avoid any references to "time." Time may heal this, time may not. You don't know, and the person isn't sure at all.

Chances are good "with time" your efforts will be appreciated and remembered, even if they didn't appear to hit the mark at the time. I'm not sure there is "a mark" to hit. Do the best you can, from your heart. Sincere, heartfelt intentions speak much louder than actual words.

(c) 2010 Susan Dunn, All rights reserved.

Only love can break a heart. What can mend it?

THE PRODIGAL SON BY REMBRANDT. I was lucky enough to see this painting in the Hermitage.
Rembrandt had four children, only one of whom survived.**

Only love can break a heart. Only love can mend it again.
Time can bring you down. Time can bend your knees.
Many people use the term "going mad" in reference to the loss of a child. Eric Clapton wrote "Tears in Heaven" "to keep from going mad," he said.
David Grossman called it "hell in slow motion."

Grieving the loss of a loved one is hard work. It is painful, so painful that you can be tempted to shut down and not do what feels like compounding the situation. To face the full brunt of the loss of the death of a child, or loss of a spouse or parent takes tremendous courage, even spirit. Yet we know from emotional intelligence that if you stuff down one emotion, you stuff down ALL emotions. If you want to ever feel joy again, then you must grieve -- go through the experience, not around it. I told myself during my hardest grieving period that I was carving out a valley to later be filled with joy - the depth of the joy one day to be equal to the depth of the loss. I believe that with love, faith and hard work, the part of you that is still alive comes back one day ... and you want to be available for that.

Whether you've lost a spouse, a child, a sibling, a parent, or a dear friend ... the developmental task is to be willing to love again in the face of such a terrible loss. As Betty Ann Rutledge, a program director for grieving families writes:

But how do we heal those gaping holes in our hearts? How do we learn to live with our grief? One of the gifts of our community at Bereaved Families is our model of mutual support. I hear time and again from newly bereaved (and not so newly bereaved) people the comfort and relief that is felt when one has an opportunity to connect with someone who has experienced a similar loss. “Finally, someone who understands.” “It’s so good to talk with someone who really “gets it”. “I thought I was the only one who felt this way.” “If they can survive, maybe I can too.”

We know, from emotional intelligence, that ISOLATION is harder on health than smoking, obesity, and high blood pressure combined. And by isolation, we mean being isolated emotionally -- from other people and oneself. One of the hardest things about grief is being alone. In fact, the loss of a child often breaks up a marriage.

Call me if you would like to talk about your grief and your loved one. Together, we will say their name. See resources for the Loss of a Child.

More thoughts ...

Gene Pitney, "Only Love Can Break a Heart. Only Love ... Can Mend it Again"



Eric Clapton's four year old son Connor fell 53 floors to his death from a Manhattan high rise in 1991. His death inspired Clapton to write the hit song "Tears in Heaven." This song has special meaning to me and my son Chester.

From Eric Clapton:

When I try to take myself back to that time, to recall the terrible numbness that I lived in, I recoil in fear. I never want to go through anything like that again. Originally, these songs were never meant for publication or public consumption; they were just what I did to stop from going mad...

When it came out, it was the biggest-selling album of my entire career....But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley, and visit the grave of my son.

Many people have used poetry and art to work through their grief when they lose a child. Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Clapton are some examples.

Read about Rembrandt's painting by Twelker, psychology professor emeritus. Twelker, Paul A. (2003). Rembrandt and Psychology: Reflections on The Return of the Prodigal Son. Internet resource available at http://www.tiu.edu/college/psychology/rembrandt:

Psychology asks meaningful questions, especially if we have the spiritual ears to hear. Spiritual truth and psychological meanings can be complementary. We need not be afraid of the discipline of psychology if we allow the Spirit of God to quicken our souls and our minds to His truth. The point that I am making is that the master artist reveals a depth of understanding of this parable that is both spiritual and psychological. You can understand the concepts of love, relationship, guilt, motivation, pride, jealousy, repentance and forgiveness through the study of psychology. And you can even deepen your understanding through personal experience. And then, at some point in time, prompted by the Spirit of God, your soul is stirred to its very depths and you awaken to new meanings of life...of redemption...of mercy...of refreshment. It is then that you realize that the discipline of psychology is but humankind’s noble attempt to understand truth--and that is a very God-honoring ambition.

William Shakespeare lost his son, Hamnet, when the boy was 11 years old. He wrote it out perhaps in "Hamlet," probably for sure in "King John."

This is from "King John"

CONSTANCE

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me and to the state of my great grief
Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up: here I and sorrows sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

Seats herself on the ground

[In a later scene]

CONSTANCE
No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
But that which ends all counsel, true redress,
Death, death; O amiable lovely death!

CARDINAL PANDULPH
Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.

CONSTANCE
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Preach some philosophy to make me mad,
And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;
For being not mad but sensible of grief,
My reasonable part produces reason
How I may be deliver'd of these woes,
And teaches me to kill or hang myself:
If I were mad, I should forget my son,
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he:
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel
The different plague of each calamity....

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

CARDINAL PANDULPH
You hold too heinous a respect of grief.

CONSTANCE
He talks to me that never had a son.

KING PHILIP
You are as fond of grief as of your child.

CONSTANCE
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do...
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!

FROM A FRIEND OF WALT WHITMAN'S

In the middle of the room, in its white coffin, lay the dead child, the nephew of the poet. Near it, in a great chair, sat Walt Whitman, surrounded by little ones, and holding a beautiful little girl on his lap. She looked wonderingly at the spectacle of death, and then inquiringly into the old man's face.

'You don't know what it is, do you, my dear?' said he, and added, 'We don't, either.' (Mary Mapes Dodge, friend of Wal Whitman's)

Robert Lowell, on the death of his son: "Identification in Belfast"

..."When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh good,
it's not him because he is a blonde--
I imagine his hair was singed dark by the bomb.
He had nothing on him to identify him
except this box of joke trick matches;
he liked to have them on him, even at mass.
The police were unhurried and wonderful,
they let me go on trying to strike a match...
I just wouldn't stop-- you cling to anything--
I couldn't believe I couldn't light one match--
only joke-matches...Then I knew he was Richard."

David Grossman lost his youngest son Uri during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Grossman is a novelist. Grossman described it as "hell in slow motion, all the time."

It's a painful life, now. It's like hell in slow motion, all the time. I don't try to escape grief. I face grief in an intense way in my writing, but not only in my writing. If I have to suffer, I want to understand my situation thoroughly. It's not an easy place to be, but so be it. If I'm doomed to it, I want-- it's a human predicament, and I want to experience it....

Anything that is calm and safe seems to me like an illusion.

Death of a Child

As happens, I was in Sunday School last week and the topic came up about anger with God. One woman said she knew someone who was angry at God. It was someone who had lost their child. No one else had any examples.

This is one of the most beautiful articles I have ever read. I hope it will mean as much to you, as it did to me.
_________________________
GUEST ARTICLE ( do not know the title):

During my first year of college a life-long family friend and mentor tragically lost his son.

Separated by distance, I assumed that his Christian friends, the staff at his church, and his Sunday school class would step in and wrap their arms around him and his wife.


Needless to say I was surprised, one year later, when we were able to finally meet face to face. When I asked him how he and his wife were doing the first words out of his mouth were, “Brian, the church failed us during our greatest time of need.”


Knowing first-hand his maturity and emotional soundness, I was taken back. I thought, “If he said the church failed them, the church must have really failed them.”


Those who experience tragic loss, which I’m sure will include all of us by the time we leave this planet, experience sorrow that defies explanation. C.S. Lewis, struggling to put into words how he felt after losing his wife commented,

“No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the yawning.
I keep on swallowing.” (A Grief Observed , p. 19)

And if there was ever someone besides Lewis that couldn’t put their finger on the depth of their grief, it had to be Naomi.

The Book of Ruth tells us that Naomi was happily married to a man named Elimilech and together they had two strong sons, Mahlon and Kilion. As life goes, business took her family to a foreign country-a place called Moab. But even in that distant land their family blossomed. Life was good. Then, without even the faintest hint that heartbreak was standing at her door, Naomi’s husband didn’t return home for dinner. Who could have known that their kiss that morning would have been their last? Her sons eventually married, but even their weddings and talk of children couldn’t take away the emptiness she felt.

Finally, in a cruel twist that even Hollywood wouldn’t script, she lost both of her sons. She was devastated, alone and bewildered. Naomi was so broken that Ruth 1:20 tells us that she began asking people to not call her Naomi (meaning “pleasant”) anymore but Mara (meaning “bitter”).

The bright spot, if there can be a bright spot in someone’s tragic loss, is that there was someone who didn’t leave her. Her name was Ruth, her daughter-in-law. We’re told she didn’t offer any deep theological explanations. [emphasis mine]. There’s no record that she tried to provide the “right word” at the “right time.” All we hear is Ruth’s promise in Ruth 1:16, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay, I will stay.” And that’s exactly what she did.


I never asked my friend what his church could have done differently. I didn’t feel that it was my place. My guess? Unlike Ruth, there were probably too many words and too few visits.


About the Author Brian Jones is the author of Second Guessing God: Hanging on When You Can’t See Plan (March 2006) and the founding Senior Pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Collegeville, PA. More information about his writing and speaking can be found at brianjones.com.
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What helped me when my son died, at the age of 21? Those who just came and stayed. And didn't say anything. My older son arrived at my door with his dog (the beautiful Ygraine, a chocolate Lab), a 25 lbs. bag of dog food, her dish and her bed, and said he'd be back for her some time. My sister who came and stayed. She planted some flowers in my garden. Fixed some meals. Ignored many things. Just was present. They didn't call and ask if they could come, they didn't make any demands.

And remembering to breathe. C.S. Lewis says it's like fear. To me, it was continually feeling like I'd been hit in the solar plexus, unable to breathe. When it hit, I would remind myself to breathe. I guess oxygen helps.