Like myputer said, this is the second child in her (husbands) family to die in a matter of months, it was an baby, less than a year old last time. And I have known all these people for years, so its not like a stranger going through this. The funeral for the baby almost killed me, I really don't want to do this again, no matter how awful that sounds.
To those of you who have gone through similiar things, your in my thoughts, and thank you for sharing your experiences. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, I am sure her family would appreciate it.
To those of you who have gone through similiar things, your in my thoughts, and thank you for sharing your experiences. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, I am sure her family would appreciate it.
Don't be afraid to say the girls name, continue to speak of her. For example, "She would have loved that, she always liked rainbows." Too many times people think that it will bring sadness to the parents to have the child's name mentioned, but I know from personal experience that they appreciate that others remember what she was like and her interests. Never stop this. Twenty years from now it will make the mother happy when someone else remembers that her daughter liked sunsets (or whatever).
Even though it's hard, you should go to the funeral. Stand by the mother and support her. Let her grieve. Let her know you are there for her and will pray for her. Offer to help with the storage and/or disposal of personal items, but on the mother's schedule. She may not want to remove all traces of her daughter for a long, long time, and that is okay.
Unless you have had the same thing happen to you, don't say you know how she feels. Don't say, "Now you have an angel in heaven" unless you are certain that would be comforting. Don't say, "At least she didn't suffer." The best thing is to say, "I'm so sorry this happened."
And, I'm so sorry this happened.
Even though it's hard, you should go to the funeral. Stand by the mother and support her. Let her grieve. Let her know you are there for her and will pray for her. Offer to help with the storage and/or disposal of personal items, but on the mother's schedule. She may not want to remove all traces of her daughter for a long, long time, and that is okay.
Unless you have had the same thing happen to you, don't say you know how she feels. Don't say, "Now you have an angel in heaven" unless you are certain that would be comforting. Don't say, "At least she didn't suffer." The best thing is to say, "I'm so sorry this happened."
And, I'm so sorry this happened.
I honestly don't know, just thinking about that possibility brings a tear to my eye. Given my 10 month old son is currently slapping his keyboard on the floor next to me while I type this, I just don't know.
I honestly don't know if I would have the strength to get through it, although I think I would have to for his mothers sake.. But man, it's pretty much unthinkable. I know I'd think of all the times I was a less than perfect parent, and got upset with him for being "naughty" and got frusterated. I guess just look back on all the good memories and be thankful for the time you had..
-Phil
I honestly don't know if I would have the strength to get through it, although I think I would have to for his mothers sake.. But man, it's pretty much unthinkable. I know I'd think of all the times I was a less than perfect parent, and got upset with him for being "naughty" and got frusterated. I guess just look back on all the good memories and be thankful for the time you had..
-Phil
My condolences go out to that family.
I personally couldn't answer the question of how to cope with such a sad situation but before I was born, my parents had a baby boy. He died before I even knew him. The only thing I know about him was his name. I don't know how my parents go through that time but theyve never bought it up on their own accord. I don't even know how long he lived before he passed away.
I personally couldn't answer the question of how to cope with such a sad situation but before I was born, my parents had a baby boy. He died before I even knew him. The only thing I know about him was his name. I don't know how my parents go through that time but theyve never bought it up on their own accord. I don't even know how long he lived before he passed away.
Sorry to hear of your loss. I don't know what to say that could possibility ease your sadness. My condolences.
I think losing your child is probably one of the worst things ever in life. I think the best thing you can do now is be that strong person by their side. A bunch of people standing around and crying isn't going to help.
<< Even though its not yours? A little girl, the daughter of one of myputer and my friends, died tonight. 12 years old, and she complained of a bad headache, laid down, and never woke up again. They turned off her life support about an hour and a half ago. Turns out, she was born with a brain aneurysm, and it was just a matter of time before it burst. Now its 3:30 am, and I can't sleep. I keep thinking about how just a few months ago, Shanni and I were playing Skip It with her, and teaching her how to dance all silly in these big white shoes. My oldest son is only 2 years younger than her, and its just heartbreaking. I can't stop crying, even though she isn't mine. I just pity that poor family so bad.... and I can't even imagine what they are going through.
I just keep hugging my kids, and reassuring myself that they are ok. >>
It's not the same, but... we had ten miscarriages (no kids). After a while, I just turned off parts of my brain. Every now and then, something reminds me, and it all comes back as a dull gray cloud. Until that point in life, I had convinced myself that I could shake off anything, that there was always hope.
As has been said, there can't be much worse to face in this life. My sincere condolences to you and your friends.
<< It's not the same, but... we had ten miscarriages (no kids). After a while, I just turned off parts of my brain. Every now and then, something reminds me, and it all comes back as a dull gray cloud. Until that point in life, I had convinced myself that I could shake off anything, that there was always hope. >>
Oh I am so sorry to hear that! That is the same, at least in my mind, you still lost your children, and that has to be horribly painful to go through.
sorry to hear that. But her death like that is better than a car accident.
If I die, i want to sleep and never wake up
If I die, i want to sleep and never wake up
Fortulately, I have never had to cope with the death of a child. We all like to deny our mortalilty.
My condolences and prayers are with you. I wish you peace in this and the same for all who knew this tragically short life
My condolences and prayers are with you. I wish you peace in this and the same for all who knew this tragically short life
GF: I just stayed up last night until 3am with my 26 month old puking her tiny guts out. To answer your question, I have a hard time even thinking about something like that happening. We do everything in our power to keep the death/injury of a child from happening, and that is all I can handle. I can not even think about dealing with the death of a child, it is too painful to even contemplate. I have a hard time even watching movies or TV shows that focus on a child getting physically or mantally hurt/abused. I get too worked up.
A good friend of mine died in a car accident at age 16 in May of last year. It hurts. The only thing worse than going through with your own personal loss, is watching his mom, dad, brother, sister and best friend go through the same thing only 10x the magnitude. I am very close to his best friend at this point, and it is very, very difficult. You don't get over it, you never feel better about it, you can't do anything about it, you're 100% helpless. You just live your life trying to be a better person than the day before because life is going to go on whether you like it or not.
i can understand what you're going through. my girlfriends' friend died of aneurysm as well. although i didnt know her, i still feel really sad. my best wishes to you and your friend.
Even though its not yours? A little girl, the daughter of one of myputer and my friends, died tonight. 12 years old, and she complained of a bad headache, laid down, and never woke up again. They turned off her life support about an hour and a half ago. Turns out, she was born with a brain aneurysm, and it was just a matter of time before it burst. Now its 3:30 am, and I can't sleep. I keep thinking about how just a few months ago, Shanni and I were playing Skip It with her, and teaching her how to dance all silly in these big white shoes. My oldest son is only 2 years younger than her, and its just heartbreaking. I can't stop crying, even though she isn't mine. I just pity that poor family so bad.... and I can't even imagine what they are going through. I just keep hugging my kids, and reassuring myself that they are ok.
Every day as I fall asleep for another time, not knowing if it will be my last, my mind wanders to far away lands, to canyons and valleys overlooking gently rolling hills, to meandering streams full of frolic and play. It wanders sometimes looking from afar and sometimes joining in, feeling like a girl at recess discovering for the first time wind blowing cooly across the minute hairs on the inside thighs and suddenly lifting up the skirt for all the world to see.
In travels by lands in the dreamworld, I see people. People whom I have known, new souls introducing themselves for the first time. "Howdoyoudo Mme Chanter... enchante". Dear friends no longer with me, some committed suicide in quiet desperation without so much as an utterance or a cry for help. They haunt me sometimes with yells of pain and guilt like tiny incicles stabbing slowly at my heart and then melting but leaving the agony and helplessness behind. A child, dead at childbirth from complications. Another, muscular distrophy, alive for enough time to torture the parents with the knowledge that the light will be extinguished soon by a renegade gene with a mission.
A young girl budding with pubescent anxiety joins me and we walk along, hands clasped together. I ask her what the matter is and she says she has a headache. Not a terrible one, but she just needs to rest. We stop and find a patch of grass. Her droopy eyes tell me a story of joy and happiness; of pain and suffering. She is tired, she says and as the lead eyelashes overwhelm her poor muscles, I know the truth, that it is time she was no longer encumbered like me in my journeys and met with me in the dreamworld. I rock her to sleep and she goes off. Loss and pain. Loss and pain. Loss and pain. Heart throbs letting me know it's alive and the icicles again return, again working their slow death.
I'm OK.
I'll be fine.
Don't worry.
Put a smile on and continue with the motions.
Remember you have to get through this.
Everyone feels this.
EVERYONE FEELS THIS?
You have no idea the depths of pain, the extremes of sorrow, and the freshness of the wounds. You cannot know my pain.
So I sit and cry. I am not OK. My world again is shattered. I wander, following the meandering streams. They lead me forward. And I bury the girl who too was once my friend but whose hand no longer clasps mine. I weep for her. I weep for the lost souls encounterd. I weep for the lost souls not encountered. I weep for the found souls and for the fellow wanderers I sometimes encounter by following the streams leading to the ocean.
Late at night, when half the world resounds in snoring slumber, my mind wanders. And I meet people. People new and old. And I remember death. And I remember those alive. And I weep, each time burying a part of me that must give birth to something new.
How do you cope with the death of a child?
You wanted to know. That's how I cope. It's not easy and any comfort brought is usually very fleeting.
Cheers !
Every day as I fall asleep for another time, not knowing if it will be my last, my mind wanders to far away lands, to canyons and valleys overlooking gently rolling hills, to meandering streams full of frolic and play. It wanders sometimes looking from afar and sometimes joining in, feeling like a girl at recess discovering for the first time wind blowing cooly across the minute hairs on the inside thighs and suddenly lifting up the skirt for all the world to see.
In travels by lands in the dreamworld, I see people. People whom I have known, new souls introducing themselves for the first time. "Howdoyoudo Mme Chanter... enchante". Dear friends no longer with me, some committed suicide in quiet desperation without so much as an utterance or a cry for help. They haunt me sometimes with yells of pain and guilt like tiny incicles stabbing slowly at my heart and then melting but leaving the agony and helplessness behind. A child, dead at childbirth from complications. Another, muscular distrophy, alive for enough time to torture the parents with the knowledge that the light will be extinguished soon by a renegade gene with a mission.
A young girl budding with pubescent anxiety joins me and we walk along, hands clasped together. I ask her what the matter is and she says she has a headache. Not a terrible one, but she just needs to rest. We stop and find a patch of grass. Her droopy eyes tell me a story of joy and happiness; of pain and suffering. She is tired, she says and as the lead eyelashes overwhelm her poor muscles, I know the truth, that it is time she was no longer encumbered like me in my journeys and met with me in the dreamworld. I rock her to sleep and she goes off. Loss and pain. Loss and pain. Loss and pain. Heart throbs letting me know it's alive and the icicles again return, again working their slow death.
I'm OK.
I'll be fine.
Don't worry.
Put a smile on and continue with the motions.
Remember you have to get through this.
Everyone feels this.
EVERYONE FEELS THIS?
You have no idea the depths of pain, the extremes of sorrow, and the freshness of the wounds. You cannot know my pain.
So I sit and cry. I am not OK. My world again is shattered. I wander, following the meandering streams. They lead me forward. And I bury the girl who too was once my friend but whose hand no longer clasps mine. I weep for her. I weep for the lost souls encounterd. I weep for the lost souls not encountered. I weep for the found souls and for the fellow wanderers I sometimes encounter by following the streams leading to the ocean.
Late at night, when half the world resounds in snoring slumber, my mind wanders. And I meet people. People new and old. And I remember death. And I remember those alive. And I weep, each time burying a part of me that must give birth to something new.
How do you cope with the death of a child?
You wanted to know. That's how I cope. It's not easy and any comfort brought is usually very fleeting.
Cheers !
Guys and Gals,
It's ironic that I am reading this thread on the same day that we took our 9 month old to visit his older brother (by a year) at his burial spot.
We had complications during the first pregnancy, and we had to do an emergency c-section to delivery our first boy at 25 weeks, which is given a 50% chance of survival. We were prepped for what we would go through if we had to deliver so soon, but it doesn't help as it's totally different when you are going through it in real time.
Our son was a resident of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for a total of 3 weeks. He was big enough to fit in the palms of both of my hands, so he was tiny. We were told that he was fighting for his life, and that we would have some ups and downs. 3 days before he passed away, we were given the news that he didn't have much time to live. That is news that you don't want to hear - why are 2 people who are in their mid-20s going through something like this when so many babies are abandoned? Questions like this filled my mind as we stood next to our dying son, crying our eyes out (which I am doing right now!)
We had him baptized by a priest on Friday, and that helped out a lot since we knew that he was finally a member of the Lord's family.
On Saturday, we already knew that it was just minutes/hours before the inevitable would happen. His heart rate was slowly going down, and it got to the point where the nurses were asking if we wanted to hold him. Seeing how that meant taking him off of the ventilator and all of the other medical equipment, we quickly got the idea on what they were trying to tell us.
Our son passed away due to the rapidly declining heart rate and his immature lungs. We held him in a room for over 2 hours and then had to make arrangements for burial.
We waited a few months for the many tests that my wife went through to find out what went wrong, and we finally tried again. We delivered our second boy in May, not a week after our first son's birthday. He was delivered via c-section at 36 weeks, and that was due to concerns that a natural birth might have ruptured the incisions that were done during the first delivery.
Our son is 9 months old today and we celebrated it by going to the L.A. Zoo. Afterwards, we drove the 2 miles over to Forest Lawn and visited his brother. We now see that having a baby is a lot of work, but we wouldn't give our boy up for anything. We had thoughts (as Metaphor posted "Time will heal all wounds. honestly if my child died, i would take my own life to be with my child. ) of "why was our boy taken?" or "Why couldn't they take me, instead of our little boy?" but that subsided as we finally understood that our first son was sent to us to tell us that my wife was at risk with an illness that can harm any pregnancies that we might go through. Once we thought of it that way, the loss was lessened a whole lot.
I just figure that when it's time for me to go, i'll have a play friend on the other side!
It's ironic that I am reading this thread on the same day that we took our 9 month old to visit his older brother (by a year) at his burial spot.
We had complications during the first pregnancy, and we had to do an emergency c-section to delivery our first boy at 25 weeks, which is given a 50% chance of survival. We were prepped for what we would go through if we had to deliver so soon, but it doesn't help as it's totally different when you are going through it in real time.
Our son was a resident of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for a total of 3 weeks. He was big enough to fit in the palms of both of my hands, so he was tiny. We were told that he was fighting for his life, and that we would have some ups and downs. 3 days before he passed away, we were given the news that he didn't have much time to live. That is news that you don't want to hear - why are 2 people who are in their mid-20s going through something like this when so many babies are abandoned? Questions like this filled my mind as we stood next to our dying son, crying our eyes out (which I am doing right now!)
We had him baptized by a priest on Friday, and that helped out a lot since we knew that he was finally a member of the Lord's family.
On Saturday, we already knew that it was just minutes/hours before the inevitable would happen. His heart rate was slowly going down, and it got to the point where the nurses were asking if we wanted to hold him. Seeing how that meant taking him off of the ventilator and all of the other medical equipment, we quickly got the idea on what they were trying to tell us.
Our son passed away due to the rapidly declining heart rate and his immature lungs. We held him in a room for over 2 hours and then had to make arrangements for burial.
We waited a few months for the many tests that my wife went through to find out what went wrong, and we finally tried again. We delivered our second boy in May, not a week after our first son's birthday. He was delivered via c-section at 36 weeks, and that was due to concerns that a natural birth might have ruptured the incisions that were done during the first delivery.
Our son is 9 months old today and we celebrated it by going to the L.A. Zoo. Afterwards, we drove the 2 miles over to Forest Lawn and visited his brother. We now see that having a baby is a lot of work, but we wouldn't give our boy up for anything. We had thoughts (as Metaphor posted "Time will heal all wounds. honestly if my child died, i would take my own life to be with my child. ) of "why was our boy taken?" or "Why couldn't they take me, instead of our little boy?" but that subsided as we finally understood that our first son was sent to us to tell us that my wife was at risk with an illness that can harm any pregnancies that we might go through. Once we thought of it that way, the loss was lessened a whole lot.
I just figure that when it's time for me to go, i'll have a play friend on the other side!
Triumph
Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 15,031
- 14
- 81
<< she complained of a bad headache, laid down, and never woke up again. >>
This is probably the absolute worst way, for her friends and family. Why? Because they'll never have peace again. Whenever someone is a little late coming home, whenever things seem a little too quiet around the house, whenever someone complains of mild aches and pains, the families won't be able to look past it and know that its nothing. I'm truly sorry for this little girl's family.
My sympathies.
Say your prayers for them as you fall asleep and remeber them when you awake.
They'll need you and you'll be there, so get some rest.
Say your prayers for them as you fall asleep and remeber them when you awake.
They'll need you and you'll be there, so get some rest.
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