DEEP: Parents Share Bitter Experiences About The Pain & Grief Of Losing Their Child(ren)
The death or loss of a child(ren) can be called the ultimate tragedy. Nothing can be more devastating. A child’s death robs the parents, guardians of the ability to carry out their parenting role as they have imagined it, as it is “supposed” to be.
You may feel an overwhelming sense of failure for no longer being able to care for and protect your child, duties that you expected to fulfill for many years. Along with the usual symptoms and stages of grief, there are many issues that make parental bereavement particularly difficult to resolve.
Under a tweet shared by Nigerian literary critic and dad, Ikhide Ikheloa, (Pa Ikhide@ikhide) whose daughter survived a ghastly auto crash in Maryland, U.S, parents shared the pain of losing their children.
”Parenting is at once an act of courage, and of cowardly acquiescence. My parents’ trauma on the loss of my brother Ikekhuamen still haunts me to this day. And I was just 4 when he passed away at UCH Ibadan. I remember every wail. I remember. May you never live to bury your child,” Pa Ikhide shared.
Others also shared about their parents’ grief after death of their siblings and it is really deep!
Read below…
A dad, Wale Fatade@walfat
For those of us who have watched our children dying, you never come out of the experience. It stays with you forever, gnawing at your heart, reminding you whenever you see your child’s mates and wondering what could have become of your own child. I wouldn’t wish it for my enemy.
I’ve lost 3 children, you never come back from it. You see their friends and age mates and forever wonder in your heart what could have been….the lost triumphs and losses of your child’s life.Wishing your daughter quick recuperation and you and your family strength. There’s no measuring the human capacity to suffer and take pain yet still survive and find joy and happiness.
We go through life believing that death is something that happens to someone else, to bad people. Until it happens to us. Then our world shatters as the pain of irredeemable loss sears through. Mannerisms of the departed that once irritated, become a source of joy in recall.
Amen. My parents buried two children. I’m certain I wouldn’t survive it if it were me. A part of my mother died with my brother. They’ve never really recovered. It’s been years and I haven’t forgotten that terrible time.
I buried my only son. It’s a year, am still distraught.
I’m typing this with tears. I still cry every day for my daughter that I lost to brain tumor last year August 18th. I man up because of my wife, parents, daughter and son that were around (we stayed with parents when we came from Cairo while trying to take her to France again).
My prayers go to all parents that they will never bury any of their children. Cos, I was just 6years when my older brother, my parents’ first child and son left. I always wish i had a senior, it would av been a different ball game. *tears*
Hmm……… Same day you posted this, I buried my daughter who didn’t survive after birth. I still feel her tiny body in my hands as I was putting her into the hole, barely 2 feet. Despite the fact that we never met alive, by God, I know I will never do this again, EVER!!!
I wish God’s design was one that, it would be impossible for parents to outlive their children..but he knows best. My parents lost a child. I think it is virtually impossible for them to heal completely from it.
I was 3 when my younger brother died, he was the first boy after 6 girls. I remember watching fascinated while mummy scrubbed him clean in the plastic bath… Being the 6th girl, I can’t forget him.
May the Lord continue to comfort you all. This is my daily prayer, that I do not ever live to have the experience of burying my child. I saw my father waste and eventually die after we lost a promising older brother in a ghastly road accident.
