ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD

The death of a child is particularly traumatic for a parent. We take our children so for granted day by day. We worry about their rebuffs and failures. We rejoice in their accomplishments and their successes. We watch them grow. We watch their personalities develop. We laugh with them and we cry with them. They are on the path to becoming adults. All the reaching and the stretching, all the growing and the learning. Yet it is not to be. We wonder about a life that ends so soon. What was it for? Why were they here?

The answer is simple. They are here to love and to be loved. They give their love to us and to those around them. And we give our love to them. So their life is complete after all. Our dismay at its shortness cannot diminish its fullness.

Their life is love. And love is eternal.

Note: The above was written on the one-year anniversary of the death of my daughter Susan at 16. Originally it had her name and the pronoun “she” but it applies to all of us.

Loren Bullock
April 12, 1967