Reconciling the irreducible pain of child loss

Since my first experience of world-shattering loss nearly 18 years ago, I’ve been a student of grief, of traumas associated, of the mental illness that visits and often stays for a prolonged period.  I found my way through via the grace of God, but there are still so many factors in loss that are irreducible.  Many things about loss just never change.  The concept is so intransigent that the grief out of loss is meant to undo us; it seems so cruel.

Add to that the concept of child loss.

It’s not the normal flow of things that children die before parents, just as the death of dreams brings a gaping hole into the presence of a living person.  I know so many people with children who have severe or profound disabilities, who are reminded weekly if not daily what they and their children have missed out on.  Then there are those people who suffer the loss of children they never can have.  Finally, and most tragically, there are the parents who lost children they knew, who they loved, and could never love more.  But equally there are those who lost partners who watch on as their children seem eternally lost in their grief.  And then there are the prodigals for whom parents wait, tragically cut off from their lives.  Still there are more.

There doesn’t seem to be any space for parents such as these, who continue to go on being faced with those peers of their children whose age will ultimately weary them, years and decades from now.  And the hard thing about this, is it’s often easier for others who haven’t suffered loss to not go there; to not validate the existence of a pain that continues to ebb and flow through the grieving parent’s lifespan.

Other times it’s those of us who have lost a child who would prefer no more interrogations. “Okay, you don’t get it.  Leave me alone now.”

Guilt always plays a role in loss, even when there’s nothing to be guilty for, because there are always things we could all have done better; none are perfect, yet it wrecks us to think we weren’t.  Guilt is a cruel taskmaster.  But its redeeming feature is it can be the vehicle into lament, for tears are healing even if for the temporary.  Let guilt carry us to sorrow, a much cleaner emotion.

I often think of loss as a parent as that feature of living where existence is courage.

There are so many forms of life that are lived for extended seasons — two years, three, five years, 15 and 20 — and even entire lifetimes, where merely existing is courage.

Those who’ve been horribly abused, those who are persecuted, and those who have suffered losses for which there is no return.

It is barely any compensation, but the validation for being courageous is sometimes enough to be of some encouragement, to keep stepping, to keep going about our daily activities for the loved ones and friends who remain.  And what a miracle if there’s a reason for joy.

Somehow, out of loss that breaks us, we find a softening occur in our hearts, where empathy swells and expands.  Such a softening makes us much more sensitive to the wiles of a rough-and-tumble life.  But we have a fresh purpose in being shown what we can never now deny.  There are people who will need us; people who are destined to walk a similar if not the same path.

As we have needed guides, they too will need guides.

Reconciling the irreducible pain of child loss is never a list of ‘do these 10 things and you’ll heal.’  It’s a search.  Loss teaches us to search into faith that we may find something to reduce the pain, or to make out of the pain some worthwhile purpose or meaning.

It’s surprising how much pain we can bear when we know there is a purpose for it.

Suffice to say, the pain of child loss reaches the realms of the inexplicable, and I’m comforted that as a pastor, the Bible speaks of such pain the same confounding way.  So many times, pain calls us to silent and reverent responses, because there are no words.

Yes, silence with presence; a grieving parent knows all too well.