When a child dies

What can be said, other than to convey the deepest of condolences for their loss. It may also depend on the circumstances of the death and the age of the child. No words of comfort are going to get through at such a time for a parent. I believe it would also depend on their spiritual condition.

I do some volunteer work with a group that works with really sick kids. One mother, whose child had died, said that if she had to do it over again, she would, because the years that she spent with her child were so special.

I have altered her observation a bit to "think how lucky you/we are to have known him/her and how unimaginably different you/our lives would have been otherwise".

And, don't just offer to do "anything" (because they won't ask) but come up with something specific you can do to help.

And, remember to check in with them months from now when most everyone else has gone on with their lives. Most of these parents that I've known welcome the opportunity to talk about the child that they've lost but people are afraid to bring it up and they are afraid to bring it up too.

Do you have anything to say to those who would have them believe that "God needed another angel in heaven?"

Ummm. That's tough. For me at least since I don't believe God goes around killing kids because he has some kind of staffing shortage.

Maybe revert to the standby "God works in mysterious ways and although it can be terribly hard to understand the purpose of such things...." and refering to some personal lesson you have learned from the life of the child who died.

This is probably said by people who really don't know what else to say. I am a Christian, but I would never make this statement. People and children who die do not become angels.

I might say something more to the fact that we do not fully understand God's plan and the reasons for things happening. In faith we know that He loves us and cares for us. We must believe that those challenges that we face are there for our ultimate good, even though it certainly may not seem like it in this time of loss and sorrow. if we truly believe that we are destined to be with God in eternity, then it is only a tempory parting that we now experience.

Having said that, I pray daily for those children that pass from this life along with those who never saw the light of day having not completed the birth process. I pray that their soul will find peace in eternity until that day when all souls shall come together.

neo, I'd try to focus on the beauty and miracle of the life, and encourage spending some time dwelling on the past....facing the future (or even the present, as far as the childs reality is concerned) can wait.... and admit that I can't imagine what a terrible loss they are suffering.

boomerang seems to have some great thoughts there. Particularly the practical help bit.

neo, can I ask what makes you ask?

Someone lives to 120 and dies - we say "He (or she) lived a good life." We leave it at that. But the death of a child magnifies the question of why we die in the first place.

Is the child really in a better place?
Was the child's death some part of God's plan? (Or Satan's)
Did God need another angel?
Will we see the child again? Where? In heaven or on earth?
Or, are we just at a loss to explain?

Of course we would say what words of comfort we could: how blessed they were to have had the child, what can we do to help the family, etc. But that still would not answer their basic need to understand why.

I think "nobody knows" is the only honest (and arguably kindest) answer anyone on earth could give.

I half remember a bhuddist story of the bhudda being asked what the meaning of happiness is: "Grandfather dies, father dies, child dies" was the response. How is that happiness?, he asks. The reply: "Happiness is that it happens in that order"

Bhuddists feel free to correct me but I'm sure the meaning is generally correct.

The questions you raise are really of recent origin. For most of human history, the death of a child was, sadly, a commonplace . . . Martha Dandrige, who later married George Washington, first married Daniel Parke Custis--her gravidity was four, her parity three, and only two of the children survived infancy (gravidity=number of pregnancies/fetuses; parity=number of live births). Queen Anne had it even worse, her gravidity was fourteen, and her parity was one--that child died in infancy. My greatgrandmother had a gravidity of twenty-four (including several multiple fetuses), and a parity of eight. All eight children who survived infancy were born between 1889 and 1899, and had a better chance than was the case in the centuries gone by. Her daughter (my grandmother) was the first in a long line of women with multiple fetuses who succeeded in giving live birth to twins--my mother and my aunt.

In most of history, most children who were not the subject of infanticide (usually practiced on female infants, or the obviously defective infant) did not survive childhood, because of the host of diseases which ran unchecked in the world. Breast-feeding passed on immune system help to the child, but great pandemics of measles or scarlet fever could carry off most of the children in a society. But human reactions have varied. A grave site was found in Italy several years back in which a woman in middle age was buried with an adolescent boy, about 12 or 13 years of age. The boy was physically deformed, which suggests that he was born into a more tolerant group or culture, which did not practice infanticide on the deformed. If one assumes that they are mother and child, then the question arises of why they are buried together. Perhaps disease carried them both off at the same time (Theodore Roosevelt's cherished child-bride, Alice Lee, died shortly after giving birth, from a septic disease which carried off Teddy's mother on the same day). Perhaps one or the other simply didn't wish to live once the other had died. Perhaps one or the other was sacrificed when the other died.

Horses, long the faithful laborers of mankind, meant that infant and childhood mortality remained high in cities for many centuries. Horses are a vector for tuberculosis, and their manure in the streets provided for an abundance of flies, a vector for many diseases.

This question would likely not have occurred to people even as recently as a century ago, without being surrounded by the morbid trappings of a gymnastic attempt to use religion to comfort the greiving survivors.

Setanta, your post correctly identifies my ulterior motive; but you must know by now that I do learn from other members' input.

Surely people have always grieved for the death of a loved one, high mortality rates notwithstanding.

The clergy have their ways of comforting. So I post in the religion forum.

I don't mean to beg your question, Boss, and i would say that some cultures have mourned the loss of every member; others have quite different means of dealing with this, such as not naming children for some time after their birth, sometimes not for months. Others give a name to children, which is changed when the child successfully survives childhood and reaches adolescence. The primitive belief of Koreans held that a child was two years of age at the time they appeared in the world via the birth canal--a bizarre contention, which may have psychologically sheltered them from the trauma of post-partum death. Some cultures have even refused to publicly acknowledge the existence of a child until they have survived for a certain period of time.

I do not believe that one can make a universal statement on this issue. Some cats and dogs very obviously grieve for the loss of one of their litter, and mourn the taking away of their litter at too early an age. Others will ignore or even kill members of their litters. I think this is useful by way of analogy to demonstrate that individual reactions are more important than group reactons--such as the woman buried with her deformed child. One of the objections i have to organized religion is that it seeks to make a mental template to cover all contingencies--and so often fails. I wonder how many people have found no comfort in "the benefit of clergy," and have abandoned, at least privately, their creed because of a failure to comfort them for their loss.

I stopped immediately when I read this--and haven't read any responses.

I cannot understand this homocidal inanity.

It's like saying, "God killed your baby."

As far as the Christian angle--that may comfort a Christian--


Someone told me this--
Our children aren't really ours, though we certainly feel they are in every fiber of our beings--

But, if we are believe what our faith claims, we are entrusted with each of our children specifically and purposefully. We're chosen for them, and they, for us. Our responsibility is to love them, care for them and guide them for as long as we have them. We get them from God, and they return to God. You had so many talents and qualities that <your child> really benefitted from. Your <sense of humor> made her a <joyful> child. For the time you had <your child>, what a wonderful job you did for her. She's so fortunate that God chose you for her. And, I know you feel blessed to have been the one to share <your child's> life with her.

All we can do is our best. Other things we can't control. You did your best for <your child>. I'm sure she'll tell you herself when you see her again.

Let a friend talk about her/his child. Let them cry, and cry with them. Let them laugh and tell fond, funny memories about the child.

Call them.

By the way, Neo . . . it appears to me that your have decided that there was a "tone" to my previous response which you considered at the least unfortunate, if not actually offensive. You shouldn't assume what anyone's tone is in such a setting. We cannot see and hear one another; we cannot reliably judge of tone. No big deal, i make the same mistake all the time.

Didn't mean to make it sound that way. I appreciate your perspective.

Sometimes it takes me a while to explain it to Joe Sixpack, though.

You and your shadow . . . is multiple personality disorder painful, or just confusing?

Joe gets testy when I call him in the middle of the night to ask him if he understands this or that.

I've learned to wait until we can pop a cool one.

You want a serious answer? My personal opinion is that if God exists, He would make His will and purpose clearly understandable to even the most unsophisticated. I (mostly) try to make my posts conform to a standard of ordinary logic.

I don't always succeed. But I continue to practice. Joe Sixpack is just my way of explaining the standard I am trying to meet. Besides, he marinates some mean ribs.

I rather suspect that Joe Sixpack is your way of dissembling, a bit of self-deprecation which absolves you of the consequences of scaling heights to which others might allege you ought not to have aspired in the first place.

Me, i like to sing and dance, and i'll sing and dance on your grave as quickly and surely as i will happily sing and dance at your wedding. Though i sing out of key, or misstep in the dance, does not lessen my enjoyment of, nor intention to continue to sing and dance.

Interestingly, I have worked with very elderly, dying women in the past - who bore children when child-mortality was a lot higher than now (but much less, of course, than earlier generations).

Many of them were most, as they faced dying, immersed in dealing with the grief of the loss of the stillborn or infant deaths they had suffered - ofen unmarked by ceremony at the time - (there was a long period when stillborn babies were whisked from the room, unseen, and no mourning was countenanced by custom and practice.).

I do wonder if, in earlier generations, where births and deaths of children were both far more common, the parental bond was also weaker - given the number and demands of children, and the likelihood that much of the care was given by older siblings. Women spent most of their lives pregnant, for instance.

I also wonder if those parents for whom the bond with their own parents was weakened, also, as a consequence, tended to have a les sintense bond with their own children?

Truly, I do not know.

Anyhoo - I tend to listen to parents who have lost a child - rather than talk a lot. The key factor is the ability to convey that you can handle the topic, and whatever emotion the parents have, without needing to hide or deny or pretend or censor.

I guess for me, dealing with it is about honouring and respecting the life that was lived - however short or long - and seeing it as having its own integrity and wholeness. Dead is dead, however long we have lived - and eternity is long compared with the length of any life.....