How to lose a child
Out of kindness: We’re talking about children’s deaths.
This week’s question comes to us from Chad Moore:
What do you know in your bones? No data to support you. What do you know deep down. In your bones.
I know deep down in my bones that it is hard to lose a child.
I know this, deep down in my bones, because I’ve seen the faces of parents mourning their children. Which may, in a way, count as data I suppose. Because I’ve seen enough of those parents that it may well count as a large dataset. We see those parents' faces after every school shooting in America, of which there have been 148 so far this calendar year. We see those parents’ faces in pictures that come to us from Gaza, where parents hold the bodies of their starved children, or what’s left of the bodies of their blown up children. We see those parents’ faces on GoFundMe pages where parents are asking for help burying their children because they didn’t have the money for the medication to keep them alive. We see those parents’ faces when they’re being interviewed on the news because their trans child was seen as a threat to someone. We see those parents’ faces when their Black child was seen as a threat by the cops for wearing a hoodie in the wrong neighborhood. We see those parents’ faces when their child was murdered by the greed of tech oligarchs.
We see those parents’ faces so often now that the look has become embedded in our psyche. It’s a look that’s trying to come to terms with the fact that they will not wake up to their child tomorrow, they will never tend a scraped knee again, they will never hold each others’ hands again, they will never hear the sound of their child coming home again. Because their child will never come home again.
We used to call this kind of loss “unimaginable.” But not only has it become imaginable, it’s become so normalized that we’ve decided there’s nothing to be done about it. We lower our heads in sympathy. We blame it on “the culture” as if the culture can’t be changed. We give thoughts and prayers (not to be confused with Thoughts & Prayers™). We write things like this as if they’ll make a difference, or at least make us feel less complicit. (It won’t and we aren’t.) Some of us might even write to our elected officials about it (…which I’m not discouraging). We walk home a little faster than usual because we know (hope) our kid is waiting there for us. We give them an extra long hug for reasons they might not totally understand (…again, not discouraging this.) And ultimately we go back to our lives. Because we can. Because, for now—this time—we can.
I know deep down in my bones that it is hard to lose a child, because as a parent looking at another parent you recognize that parent is going through the thing you fear most in the world. The phone call that comes in the middle of a boring Wednesday a few hours after you dropped your kid off from school. The breaking news text with the name of a school that’s too familiar, or the name of a theater that’s too familiar, or the name of a park or church that are too familiar. And you hope that those parents’ weren’t standing when that call or text came in because your own knees are weak just thinking about the possibility. And you imagine yourself dropping. Dropping to the floor. Dropping lower, to a place where you might never crawl back out of.
I know this, deep down in my bones, because even though I haven’t suffered the fate of those parents, their pain is clear. It’s in their face. It’s deeper than that. It goes forever. It never goes away.
I know deep down in my bones that it is hard to lose a child, because my parents lost a child. She was born. Her life on this planet lasted one minute. And she was gone. I think of what it must have been like to see your child alive for a minute. I think about how long that minute has lasted for my parents. My aunt tells the story of my father carrying my sister’s casket to her grave by himself, it was so small. And in his worst moments, of which there were—and continue to be—many, I think of this. I think of how he must have felt in that moment. I wonder what it’s like to put to rest a child that you never got to put to bed. Never got to hold. That moment imbues him with a humanity I saw too rarely. It’s a moment I never witnessed because I was born less than a year later. Into a household that already knew the pain of losing a child. My parents never talk about it. I assume it is easier for them this way. But sometimes I wonder—selfishly, maybe—what their lives, and by extension mine, would’ve been like if they hadn’t lost a child. I’m sure it would’ve been different. I feel that in my bones as well.
When I see the looks on the faces of parents’ who’ve lost their children on television, I see a look I’ve seen on my parents’ faces as well.
I know deep down in my bones that a parent’s life is never the same again.
I also know deep down in my bones that it doesn’t have to be this way. Death is not preventable, of course. Even the death of a young child is sadly not preventable. But in this year alone, we’ve had 148 school shootings in K-12 schools with 4 children killed, and those deaths were preventable, as is the 149th school shooting. I don’t have to say this is in the United States, because this is always in the United States. And while we may have data on bodies (and we will argue about that data), we have no data on suffering. Suffering isn’t quantifiable. Suffering is felt in your bones.
I know that deep down in my bones hell exists. Because, even though I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in heaven, I need a place where Alex Jones can spend eternity in pain for the terrorism he’s inflicted on the parents who lost their children at Sandy Hook. I’ve willed hell into existence for Alex Jones, the same way that he’s willed it into existence for so many grieving parents.
I know that deep down in my bones America’s leadership doesn’t care about its children enough to want them alive. And hasn’t for a long time. In 1999, fourteen children were murdered at Columbine. In 2012, twenty children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook. In 2022, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered at Uvalde. Yesterday, two more children were murdered in Minneapolis. This could’ve—and should’ve—stopped at any of those tragedies, or any of the many in between. Instead, our nation’s leaders (from both parties) did nothing to stop the killing. And you can argue that change is hard. You can argue that legislation is hard. You can argue that separating Americans from their guns is hard. (“We will need them defend ourselves against a tyrannical government!”) I know deep down in my bones that all of those things are true enough.
But none of them are as hard as holding your dead child and realizing they will not be coming through your door tomorrow, with a skinned knee, asking for a hug.
At some point today, or tomorrow, a politician somewhere will step to a podium and tell us that this is not who we are, but when you’re covered in the blood of children, and have been for a long time, you have to accept the fact that this is indeed who we are.
I know deep down in my bones we need to be better.
💔 Please donate what you can to Moms Demand Action. They’re out there doing the work to stop gun violence.
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