Jack suffered from crippling depression for years prior to his death.  In some ways I thought I was prepared to lose him.  I was not.  Reading books, attending support groups, seeing a grief therapist, and the support of my friends and family has made it bearable.  I also was interviewed for a podcast "Grieving Overdose Death" which was cathartic, and I created a playlist to memorialize him.  If you or anyone you know is experiencing the death of a child, they might find my reading list helpful:

Reading List for Grieving:

A Grief Observed
by Lewis, C. S.


Grieving Mindfully
A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping With Loss
by Kumar, Sameet M.


Resilient Grieving
Finding Strength and Embracing Life After A Loss That Changes Everything
by Hone, Lucy


The Year of Magical Thinking
by Didion, Joan


The Grieving Brain
New Discoveries About Love, Loss, and Learning
O'Connor, Mary-Frances


The Other Side of Sadness
What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss
Bonanno, George A.

Healing after Loss - Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman

A Broken Heart Still Beats - After a Child Dies
by Ann McCracken and Mary Semel

When Breath Becomes Air 
by Paul Kalanithi

Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grieving-overdose-death/id1462181055?i=1000588716127

One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need--of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.

Another favorite poem, which captures the vicissitudes of life -- the agony and the ecstasy, the sham and the glory, the heart ache and pain, which none of us escape. But take time each day, to be happy, and to be grateful for the whole of it. 

— Max Ehrmann, 1927

Visitors to my house will find a framed version in the guest room. So come visit ;)

I just love this poem, which a friend sent me this year on St. Patrick's Day. Dark days, and dark periods, don't last forever, and it's good to be reminded that out of darkness, eventually the light again always re-emerges. 

Blessing