Oh, we talk about the best cold medications and if cherry cough syrup tastes better to kids than orange. We can recommend preschools and sneakers. But the hardest part of parenting is the least often discussed. The roughest aspect of being a parent is losing a child.

For the last eight days, I have read comments to my article “Stop telling me how wrong I am!” I have read the emails sent to me in response to that article. I have listened to what people have told me when they see me in the store or talk to me on the phone. I have cried because of the heartless and cruel things that have been said to me. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want. It doesn’t seem to matter how much pain I’m in and how much more those comments have added to it. Every day, every single one of the last eight days, I have cried because of something said to me about my grief.

Having never been down this road I now travel, I have been unsure of how this grieving process goes. It’s the hardest road I’ve ever walked. To make it even harder, are the “well-meaning” people who feel it is their duty to tell me how to grieve.

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.