Grieving the Death of Our Child During the Coronavirus Pandemic

UK Helpline: 0345 123 2304 | www.tcf.org.uk If our child has died due to Covid-19, the continued press and television coverage of hospital wards and patients on ventilators might be particularly upsetting. We might also resent the idea that our child is counted amongst those alarming fatality statistics, when in reality they are so much more. They are an individual; they are our child whom we love. If our child has been ill for a while and died due to other causes, the pandemic might still have affected us. We may have been unable to spend as much time with our child as we wished, or perhaps missed being with them in their final moments. Even if we ourselves were there, this might not have been an option for other family members. For some, our child’s death has come suddenly, and with no notice. They might have died from an unexpected health emergency, in an accident, by suicide, or from another cause. We will be in a state of shock and everything might seem surreal. We operate on auto-pilot because initially normal emotions and responses are paralysed. As we begin to comprehend what has happened, we experience a bewildering array of strong emotions. Our imagination might run riot as we try to picture exactly what happened to them. We might question if someone was to blame, although many parents bereaved in this way blame themselves, usually without any foundation. As parents we cannot protect our children from everything that might cause them harm, even sometimes their own actions. Whatever our feelings at this time, one of our first tasks will be informing other people what has happened, and making arrangements for our child’s funeral. This again is complicated by the pandemic. The regulations may not permit us to hold a funeral for our child in the way we would have wished. The numbers who will be able to attend are limited. This means that not all of our child’s friends or our own, nor perhaps all of our family members, will be able to attend the ceremony. We might choose to livestream the event as a way of including more participation, but this will not