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THE GAP

The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is 
profoundly difficult to bridge. No one, whose children are well and 
intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children 
have absorbed and what they bear. Our children come to us through every 
blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast 
cereal. We seek contact with their atoms, their hairbrush, their 
toothbrush, their clothing. We reach for what was integrally woven into 
the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded.
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A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed, it often does 
not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter 
there, is to be cut deeply and torn anew, each time, by the jagged edges 
of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our 
children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will 
change us profoundly. At some point in the distant future, the edges of 
that hole will have tempered and softened but the empty space will 
remain – a life sentence.

Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve 
for our children, in part, through talking about them and our feelings 
for having lost them. Some go there with us, others cannot and through 
their denial adds a further measure, however unwittingly, to an already 
heavy burden. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” six months later 
is simply “to not get it.” The excruciating and isolating reality that 
bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any 
other human experience. Thus it is a trap – those whose compassion and 
insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that 
would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And yet, somehow there 
are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us 
and stay, to our comfort. They have understood, again each in their own 
way, that our children remain our children through our memory of them. 
Their memory is sustained through speaking about them and our feelings 
about their death. Deny this and you deny their life. Deny their life 
and you no longer have a place in ours.

Red tulip resurrection in black white for peace love hope. The flower is a symbol for the power of life and soul and the strength beyond grief and sorrows. It also symbolizes the healing of stress or burnout.

We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often 
very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful and 
the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that companies us, 
sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice, we 
fear we would become truly unreachable, and so we remain “strong” for a 
host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our 
will. Were we to act out our true feelings we would be impossible to be 
with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise. 
People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard.

Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every 
experience – and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we 
will have recovered when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to 
be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point or who will still 
be with us.

We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents 
must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. 
This is our attempt. For those untarnished by such events, who wish to 
know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may 
provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.

By Michael Crenlinsten

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