One of a series of leaflets published by The Compassionate Friends Coping with grief “I cried and cried. I couldn’t stop. Yet my wife was calm on the outside, just processing what had happened. Her friends visited to give her support, and they ended up supporting me as well as her.” There are so many powerful emotions that can threaten to overwhelm us when our child dies, including deep sorrow, anger, despair, regret and guilt. At times we are confused, as if we are lost in an endless bad dream. We may feel numb from shock. We can go through all of these feelings in one day, often several times. Sorrow and despair “I plunged into a deep pit - the whole world weighed heavily on me.” In our entire lives up to now we may never have felt such deep sorrow. There is sorrow for our child who has been robbed of their life, sorrow for ourselves that our precious child has gone forever, and sorrow for everyone who loved our child and will now be in such pain. Sorrow is not self-pity. It is a much more generous and caring emotion. It comes only from love. There is no cure for sorrow, but many of us do find some comfort in activities that honour our child’s memory. Saying their name, visiting places that were meaningful in their life story, or eating the foods they once enjoyed can give some solace. Guilt and regrets As men, we give ourselves the role of protector of our child. We feel that our job is to protect them from harm, but now the unthinkable has happened and they have died. It may be illogical and without any factual foundation, but we may still blame ourselves for somehow letting this tragedy happen. Thoughts go around and around in our minds: things we should have done, things we shouldn’t have done. We exhaust ourselves; we beat ourselves up. We may also feel guilty for laughing at a joke, or for not thinking about our child for just a brief moment. We can feel guilty simply because we are still alive. On top of this, if we ever had problems in our relationship with our child, we won’t be able to avoid turning these issues over in our mind. Part of being human and
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