Wanting To Follow

The book "Beyond Endurance, When A Child Dies" by Ronald J Knapp is written by someone who has never lost a child, but he is a professional who has studied and interviewed 155 families, and then written about his findings.  The book is clinical but extremely insightful.  He writes about something that many grieving do not even talk about for fear of being judged 'suicidal'.  This feeling has nothing to do with being suicidal.  But universally, when a child dies, a parent has the desire to follow that child into death.  

He says that the loss of an older child, particularly a sudden death, leads the parents to contemplate their own deaths as a way of legitimizing the loss.  Closely related to 'survivor syndrome', this feeling is a typical reaction to the sudden death of a child.  The author says there are two phases to this - the acute phase, which lasts two weeks to three months, then the chronic phase, (which can last for years) where the attitude about death is "take it or leave it".

What really keeps these parents moving forward is the recognition that one's own death would compound the hurt already experienced by other family members.  They may still prefer death, but at the same time they recognize their responsibilities for the best.

The positive side of this emotion is that few parents ever fear death the same way they did before the tragedy.  Living with no fear of death or dying may become a permanent characteristic of the after-death period for the majority of parent-survivors.

I have found this to be true for Todd & I, every single part in this chapter of the book.  We mentioned it to our pastor today and a frown flickered over his face.  It is so far beyond what is "socially acceptable" but for a grieving parent, it is (here comes that word) NORMAL.