Child Loss

I’ve said since Cassy died, that I wasn’t sure what I believed in anymore. Tonight, with help from my wonderful next door neighbor, Bruce, I finally made some sense of my confusion.

This story is about people’s interpretation of what’s good or bad; or how easily we see the glass half empty or half full. This scenario is the aftermath of Liviu’s departure from this world. As I may have mentioned in other stories, there is no pain larger than the loss of a child. Taking your own child to the grave is the most difficult experience of his parent’s life. I may repeat this statement many times in the course of this book, because it sticks in my brain all the time.

Of all the statements and spiritual platitudes quoted at me since my son Daniel’s death, the phrase that I hear most frequently makes me squirm the most. “You have to get on with your life.” Recently, I quit squirming long enough to ponder the meaning behind this phrase that is usually said to the bereaved in the form of a command. Exactly what does this phrase mean? What are people implying when they say it?

It was after midnight when I finally closed the book and reached to turn out the light. The book I had been reading was entitled, A Friendship With God. As I tried settling in and snuggled down into my pillow, my mind was racing. The man who wrote the book—the fourth in a series of books—said that he had been talking to God and that God talked back to him! Well what made him so special, I thought. After all, that was something I had been doing for a very long time—talking to God that is, though not as much in the past five years as I had done before…Before the death of my youngest child back in 1995 when my world fell apart.

The grief that we feel when a loved one dies often overwhelms us with feelings and emotions that can go on for many months or even years. It does not seem to matter if the death of the one for whom we are grieving came after a long illness or was totally unexpected, as is the case in an accident. And the grieving can bring us physical pain and symptoms as well as mental or emotional ones. Most of us seem to feel that if we could just have one more conversation, or spend just five more minutes with the one who has died, our own pain could be alleviated. We all long for that contact, deep in our souls.

Babies do go to heaven. I can't offer any scriptural basis for my belief; only a personal experience. I have felt Jesus pressing upon my heart to share my experience for some time now. I selfishly hoarded the experience not wanting to share it with a large number of people. In all honesty, I didn't want the world to know because I thought it might diminish the importance of the event. However, Jesus reminded me that he wouldn't have blessed me with an experience like this if he didn't want me to share it with others. I dedicate this to all the women out there who have lost a child due to abortions or miscarriages. I hope this will comfort your heart and soothe your spirit like it did mine.