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How do you put "grieving" and "with dignity" in the same sentence as "loss of a child". That is not a realistic goal by any stretch of the imagination. The reality is that when you lose a child, you can't grieve with dignity. You can't and shouldn't bother trying to grieve with dignity when it comes to losing your child. Letting it all out is the best therapy there is. Just make sure that it's legal.

I know what the loss of a child is. It takes your life and rips your heart right out of your chest. You could put on a show for other people. In fact, it's pretty much necessary. You pretend that you are okay. After a while you might even believe it. The truth is laying just under the surface waiting to erupt.

I remember the feeling of going back to work after a terrible car accident took the life a a child that I loved with everything in me. I put a smile on my face and I talked to people, but I am sure they could see my face swelled from having cried all night long and then all the way to work. What they didn't know was that every time I passed an object such as a computer, I wanted to pick it up and throw it across the room. Every wall that I saw, I wanted to put a huge gaping hole in it.

Losing a child isn't as simple as losing anyone else in your whole life. If you lose a parent, that is the way nature is supposed to work. If you lose a friend or any other family member, you learn to cope with it. Losing a child is so different. It isn't something that is easily coped with. They aren't supposed to die before you, they are supposed to bury you.

You want to become numb because then at least you wouldn't feel this pain and emptiness. Sometimes you wish that you were in the grave with them because it would be easier than feeling like this every single day of your life. You look at everything as a could have been or a should have been. It is no longer what can be.

Why would you need to be dignified in a situation like this anyway. That is just outrageous. Your child is now frozen in time. All the dreams you had about what their lives would turn out to be are now shattered because of one moment in time. The moment that your child takes their last breath is the moment when you lose all control of anything that happens after that.

You stand before people a shell of the former you. You aren't being dignified, you are trying to keep yourself from screaming or throwing things. It's that simple. Never will your life be the same. This is a person that you raised from top to bottom. Now there is nothing left of that.

I remember trying not to cry so that I didn't make it harder on other people. That didn't work, the more I tried not to, the more I would. I would stand in front of people who were talking to me about something and behaved as though I was really listening, but I wasn't. All I could think about was "Why did Jason die?". This kind of death shatters you. The pieces that break off and shatter go somewhere that you can never find them again and you would never be able to put together again anyway.

Dignity? No, there is no dignity in you when you lose a child. All of those feelings are just below the surface waiting for the chance to bust out of their bondage. Jason died in the year 2000. It has not been nearly 8 years since that phone call broke into our peaceful lives. Nothing is the same as it was then. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Learn more about this author, Dawn Hawkins.
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