March 17, 2023 - 9 Years of devastating pain

Words don't come close to describe the psychological torture I've been sentenced to live.  Nothing on this earth will satisfy my maternal desire to hold my daughter in my arms and knowing it will never be possible, kills me inside.  The intense desire to see and speak to Jennifer is all consuming, not only mentally but emotionally as well.  The yearning and pining you feel to have your child back in your life is the most excruciating pains of all pains ever experienced.   I've asked myself numerous times, how is it humanly possible to hurt this badly?  It's a level of suffering that I never knew even existed.   I'm left to adapt to a world that makes no sense without Jennifer in it.  I was sentenced to live a life that I did not chose.  A life that is empty -- a  life with no color, no joy, no purpose.  It's a world so lonely and desolate; it's a world where some parents entered hesitantly, while others were thrown in without warning, like myself. It's a place that reeks of agony & despair & once here, there is no going back.  I'm left to wander the ruins of my shattered existence and praying that maybe I'll find a tiny ray of God's grace to soothe the brokenness of my soul.  This is what it feels like to live as a bereaved parent and even then it doesn't come close to describing what our lives have turned into!

Child loss is a loss like no other. One often misunderstood by many. If you love a bereaved parent or know someone who does, remember that even his or her “good” days are harder than you could ever imagine.

Compassion and love, not advice, are needed. 

Love never dies.There will never come a day, hour, minute or second I stop loving or thinking about Jennifer. Just as parents of living children unconditionally love their children always and forever, so do bereaved parents.

I want to say and hear her name just the same as non-bereaved parents do. I want to speak about my deceased child as normally and naturally as you speak of your living ones.

I love my child just as much as you love yours – the only difference is mine lives in heaven and talking about about her is unfortunately quite taboo in our culture. 

I will grieve for a lifetime. Period. The end. There is no “moving on” or “getting over it.” There is no bow, no fix, no solution to my heartache. There is no end to the ways I will grieve and for how long I will grieve. There is no glue for my broken heart, no medicine for my pain, no going back in time. For as long as I breathe, I will grieve and ache and love Jennifer with all my heart and soul.

There will never come a time where I won’t think about who Jennifer would be, what she would look like, and how she would be woven perfectly into the family.

Every missed birthday, holiday, milestone – should-be back-to-school school years and graduations; weddings that will never be; grandchildren that should have been but will never be born – an entire generation of people altered forever.

This is why grief lasts forever. The ripple effect lasts forever. The bleeding never stops.