IT NEVER GOES AWAY

Thirty years ago today, my family and I lost our child, Joseph. After all these years I wonder when I will heal. I know the passage of time has helped me to realize I need to continue to live my life that life does go on.

Funny thing about all that has ensued over the years is that I learned that I can make my son’s life, as short as it was, meaningful! I can dedicate myself unselfishly to other individuals who have not been given a chance like my daughter’s life, and I can come to understand that we each, in our own world can make a difference in someone else’s.

I look out at the landscape today, and I see the snow, the ice and the frozen cold feeling I had so many years ago when we buried Joseph. All that I felt then at his graveside, I can feel today. But it also reminds me of something else, the fact that I was surrounded by the warmth of family and friends. The tears I shed and we shed as a family, were shed by many that day. Although today we shed a tear in private, and alone, we as a family know that we don’t have to, we just do.

One hundred years from now, no one will care who I am, who my son was, and who when my son died was there, because of the lesson of life: Death is a singular event, one that will happen over and over again.

There are many people out there who have dealt with the issue of a child’s death, who will privately grieve, and some will continue to grieve collectively, but will have one thing in common: we do not and will not forget.