The Semaj MindSpa | Dr. Leahcim Semaj

We begin dreaming of our children before we meet them. We imagine their faces, wonder who they will become, and make quiet promises about the lives we hope to give them. When they arrive, we learn the sound of their breathing. We hold them through fever, calm their fears, and tend wounds that seem enormous to them, even when we know they will heal. We teach them to cross the road. Then, little by little, we must let them cross it without us.

Parenthood asks us to live with a constant tension: protect them as fiercely as we can, while accepting that we cannot protect them from everything. Still, most of us carry an expectation so deep that we rarely say it aloud: our children will outlive us.

We picture them growing older. We hope they will visit, call, argue with us about whether we need help, and perhaps care for us when we can no longer do everything for ourselves. We do not raise children as a bargain for care in old age. But we imagine them in the future because we imagine a future in which they are here.

Then a parent has to bury a son at 36.

Thirty-six. Old enough to have made a life, formed relationships, and become fully himself. Young enough that his parent can still remember the child who needed a hand to cross the road. How does a parent hold both of those images at once?

There is no age at which the death of a child becomes acceptable. When the child is an adult, people may speak about everything he accomplished. The parent hears that, and is proud. The parent also sees everything he did not get to do. The grief reaches backward into every memory and forward into every occasion he will miss. A birthday becomes a question. A familiar road becomes difficult to travel. An ordinary phone call that can no longer happen becomes something precious beyond words.

People sometimes ask how a grieving parent is coping. Often, the honest answer is: one hour at a time.

There is no sentence that can make this right. “Be strong” may be offered with love, but a parent should not have to perform strength for other people’s comfort. “Everything happens for a reason” may reflect someone’s faith, but it can land painfully when the loss is still raw.

What can we say?

“I am so sorry.”

“Tell me about your son.”

“I can sit with you.”

And then we must mean it. We can bring a meal, make a necessary call, help with an errand, or return weeks later, when the crowd has gone home and the silence has settled in.

The way forward is not a way around grief. It is a way of carrying love after the person we love has died.

For a parent, that may mean saying his name. Keeping his photographs where they can be seen. Telling the funny stories as well as the painful ones. Accepting help without feeling weak. Resting when exhaustion comes. Seeking a trusted counsellor, spiritual guide, or grief group when the weight becomes too much to carry alone. Some days, the way forward may be no more than getting out of bed and eating breakfast. That counts too.

To those standing beside a grieving parent: do not disappear because you are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Stay. Listen. Remember the child on the anniversary of his death, on his birthday, and on the ordinary days when his absence returns without warning.

I have been thinking about a father who must bury his 36-year-old son. I went to offer him strength, knowing that I could not take away his pain. I could only stand beside him. I hugged him, man to man. Perhaps that is where we begin. We cannot prepare a parent for this loss. We can refuse to leave them alone with it.

A child’s life is more than the circumstances of his death. Speak his name. Remember who he was. And keep showing up for the people who loved him.