Coping with the death of a child
The following suggestions provide specific ways in which bereaved parents can deal with their grief and get on with their lives.
1. Get information about grief and how it affects us.  One of the things we endeavor to do through our SUNRISE Aftercare Program is to provide the best information available to bereaved persons so that they can be well-informed and understand the phenomenon of grief and how it affects people.  Earlier in this article there is a summary of certain common characteristics in the grief experience.  Spend time carefully reviewing this information.  Learning about grief will enable you to distinguish the truth from the myths and misinformation that circulate freely throughout society.  Then look at your own loss and decide how this has specifically affected you personally.  Grief is a necessary process we must work through before we can accept a child’s death.  There is no shortcut or substitute for this.
2. Accept the fact that your child has died.  In the case of an infant, many bereaved parents have said that holding and touching their deceased baby helped them to accept the fact that their child was dead.  After a baby’s death the entire landscape of life has changed from what was to what is.  Accepting the reality of what has happened is an important step toward healing.
3. Mourn.  There is a difference between grief and mourning.  Grief is what happens inside of us, how we feel, and the internal reactions we have in response to loss.  Mourning is the outward expression of those inner feelings and reactions, and it is important that we find positive ways of expressing, ventilating, and verbalizing those internal feelings and reactions.  Very few experiences in life will be as physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually draining as that of losing a child.  Regardless of the circumstances of your child’s death, it is important for you to express/share your grief with another person.  Thus mourning means expressing your true feelings.  Vent your feelings.  Express your grief and anger.   Tell family members and friends how you feel and what specifically they can do.  Talk about how you feel with friends and relatives.  Tell people what you need and how they can specifically help you during this time.   
It is especially important for bereaved parents to talk openly and honestly with each other.  Since the difference in the way men and women grieve makes communication and sharing difficult, it is extremely important for each spouse to listen to the other and to attempt to understand each other’s feelings and grief. Therefore, talk with each other, cry together, and hold each other.   The death of a child creates an enormous strain on a marriage.  Crying is a healthy expression and release of tension and stress that build up within us as a result of loss.  Men often have a hard time crying.  They feel that they have to “be strong.” 
Sharing with other parents who have lost a child can also be very helpful.  They can be empathetic because they have experienced it firsthand, and they know how you feel.  Bereaved parents find that talking with other parents who have lost a child is very helpful in resolving their grief. 
4. Understand that the holidays and the anniversary of your child’s death will create stress.  Realize that many persons go through this kind of bereavement stress.  (For further information on this, see SUNRISE article, “Coping with Grief During the Holidays”)
5. Do what you need to do following the death of your baby.  Nurses and physicians who are experienced in dealing with parents who lose a baby tell us that it is important for parents to decide whether or not they want to see and hold their deceased baby.  Ask for as much time as you need to hold your baby.  Consider having other members of the family share in this experience if they need this for closure.
6. Give your deceased infant a name.  Each person is a unique individual, and our name identifies us as a special person.  A special name chosen by a baby’s parents is a priceless gift for that child, and it enables parents to be able to identify their deceased child in a personal way.
7. Collect and save special memorabilia that will serve as keepsakes.  If your infant dies before, during or soon after birth, save photographs of your child, impressions of their footprints and handprints, their blanket, gown, cap, socks, hospital identification bracelet, and birth certificate.  You may not want to look at these immediately, but as time passes and you miss your baby, you may want to look at them and recall special memories.
8. Have a funeral for your deceased infant.  This is a time in which you identify your child’s personal and unique being, acknowledge them as a person, celebrate their life, and mark their death.  The ritual of the funeral provides us with an opportunity to hear again the age-old scriptures, literature, prayers, hymns, and music that have served as a source of strength and help to countless persons across the ages. The funeral for the child is one step in the direction of accepting his/her death.  The funeral also provides an opportunity for us to grieve the loss of our child, and it allows concerned and caring persons to offer their love and support.  Many parents who chose not to have a funeral for their deceased infant confide that this is a decision they later regretted.  If you choose to have a funeral for your infant, be sure and wait until the mother is able to attend and be included in this service that remembers this baby who has died.
9. Choose to have a positive rather than a negative grief experience.  This means learning new ways of thinking.  Thought patterns become habitual, and if we choose to continually think about our grief in a negative way, we can get “stuck” in pathological grief that can be destructive.  For example, if we choose to remain in a state of anger, guilt, self-blame, self-doubt, negative feelings or sadness, it can result in physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual problems.  Unresolved grief creates problems for many persons, and it is no respecter of persons.  It can cause persons to be dysfunctional and ultimately lead to the disintegration of the personality and even death.  This is why it is so important for bereaved persons to establish new and positive ways of viewing and processing their grief. 
10. Choose to find a new purpose and meaning in your life.  For a period of time bereaved persons may experience a loss of meaning and purpose.  They may feel they have nothing to live for and even contemplate terminating their life as a means of ending the intense pain that is caused by grief.  Remind yourself that many bereaved parents feel this way; however, people do recover a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.
11. Set a reasonable and sensible pace for yourself.  Modify your social calendar as much you deem necessary to accommodate your efforts to deal with your grief.  If you need to reduce your attendance at meetings, organizations to which you belong, and engagements to which you had previously committed yourself before the loss of your child, do not hesitate to change your schedule as much as is realistically possible in order to meet your needs at this time.  Remember, you are going through one of the most difficult periods of your life, and this will affect your scheduled activities.
12. Take time to sort things out and think through what has happened.  This will provide you with an opportunity to gradually clear away the confusion and bring things back into perspective.  During these moments of thinking about what has happened you can think about and sort out all the thoughts, questions, and confusion that have been going through your mind.  This is a good time to think about your spouse, children, spiritual needs, and the ways in which this loss has changed your lives—individually and as a family—and how you are going to go about rebuilding and restructuring your life in the future.
13. Keep a journal.  Purchase a notebook that will be your own grief diary in which you record your daily thoughts, feelings, emotional reactions, questions, love, sorrow, doubts, confusion, and the ups and downs of where you are at that particular time in your personal journey through your grief.  Be sure to enter the date and time of day for each entry.  The important thing in keeping this journal is that this is a place where you can honestly express what is happening to you during a given moment.  In this journal you can record your actual feelings.  You will discover that journal-keeping plays an important role in your attempts to sort things out and think things through.
14. Sit down with your spouse and children and discuss the differences between the ways in which men and women grieve.  Explain to the children that fathers and mothers both love the deceased child, and that they show their love in different ways.  Help sons and daughters understand how and why they are grieving differently.  Discuss how important it is for each member of the family to have their private time to think and sort out what has happened, and assure each other that you can all come together for times of open and honest sharing of reactions, confusion, thoughts, and questions.  This will build and deepen a necessary bond for the entire family.
15. Resist the temptation to escape and to stay away from your home, spouse, children, and other family members.  Under the stress of losing a child we are tempted to withdraw into our own little world and try to escape the pain.  This cuts us off from others who may desperately need us.  In one sense, being at home may be painful because this is where so many of the memories of your deceased child are.  Many bereaved persons are tempted to get overly involved in work, activities or the use drugs and/or alcohol as a means of alleviating their pain.  This is an effort to escape the reality and pain of what has happened.  Drugs and alcohol only create more problems in addition to the loss of a child.  No fantasy of escape offers a real solution to the problem, because when a person attempts to escape, the real problem remains unsolved and their grief remains unresolved.  When grief is repressed, it will later surface as some other problem.  Realize that you are not alone in this battle, that there are others who understand the struggle of grief, and they are willing to help you face this grim reality.
16. Let go and cry.  Strong emotional reactions are taking place within you, and much of this is trying to come to the surface.  Ventilating and expressing these intense emotional reactions is one of the most important things we can do while we are going through grief.  Expressing strong emotions is one means of reducing and equalizing internal pressure.  Crying acts as a pressure release-valve for our entire system.  Crying releases and relieves much of the tension that builds up inside us.  Thus crying is therapeutic.  If you are a man, reconsider all of your former social conditioning that programmed you not to cry, and think about what a therapeutic role crying plays in one’s healing and recovery from grief.
17. Express and resolve your anger in a constructive way.  Anger is a common and normal reaction when we lose someone we love, and it is especially prevalent when we lose a child.  Denying that you are angry does not change the reality that you are angry.  Intense anger needs to be expressed.  Find constructive, realistic, and positive ways to express and resolve your anger.  Talk about your anger with a good listener.  This will help you let go of anger.  Choosing to hold on to feelings of anger permanently creates a psychological and spiritual quagmire that prevents one from moving into the future, rebuilding, and re-ordering life in a meaningful way.  Letting go of anger opens the possibility for one to once again be filled with love and hope which, for a period of time, seemed to have been eclipsed and overshadowed by grief.
18. Establish new and positive rituals in your daily life.  Closely associated with our thought patterns are the rituals we habitually follow day-in and day-out.  There is an inseparable and reciprocal interaction between thinking and doing.  One affects the other and vice versa, and both require repetition before they become habitual.  These new rituals are based on the kinds of positive things you need to fill your life and move you in a new direction.  Only you can determine the kinds of new rituals you need.  These rituals become one means of getting us “unstuck” from the mire of negative grief.  Thus we are able to transform negative and destructive patterns of thinking and behavior into positive and constructive patterns.    
19. Join a grief support group for bereaved parents such as Compassionate Friends.  There you will find yourself in the company of those who have experienced the grief of losing a child.  Compassionate Friends can supply you with the names of husbands and wives your age and who have lost a child the same age as the child you lost.  When you are involved in a group of other parents who have lost children you discover that you have much in common, and you can serve as a source of support to each other.  Expressing your thoughts and feelings is important in the healing process.  Bereaved persons who attend grief support groups gain understanding and insight into the nature of grief.  They are able to bond with other bereaved parents.  They have the freedom to express themselves and experience the slow and gradual healing that comes through such groups. 
20. Talk with a grief counselor.  This provides you with an opportunity to share the things that are happening to you and how you really feel.  Ask your doctor, clergyperson or funeral director to recommend a counselor with whom you can discuss your grief.  You will be relieved to find out from your counselor that you are reacting quite normally to your loss.  As you consult with a person who has skills in understanding grief and its effects, you are able to discuss all of your feelings, thoughts, and emotions, i.e., how your loss is specifically affecting you. 
As you share this kind of information about yourself, what effects this loss is having on you, and what is happening to you, a counselor can help you fashion your own program for understanding your grief, coping with it, healing in its aftermath, rediscovering meaning, and rebuilding your life.  This is based on your own particular needs and your unique grief experience.  Remember, although common characteristics of grief are present in people’s grief experiences, each person’s grief is unique, and a genuine and realistic program for recovery from grief must be based on who a person is, how loss has affected him/her, how he/she is processing their loss, and his/her needs.
21. If you are unable to talk with a grief counselor, talk with someone who will give you the freedom to express how you feel and what is happening in your life due to your loss.  Open and honest sharing with another person is conducive to healing.  Persons who listen empathetically to us without being critical or judgmental are a source of help in our recovery.  Avoid negative, critical, and judgmental individuals.  Positive, encouraging, and caring persons who allow us to be ourselves play an important role in our lives as we move through this “dark night of shadows” and into the sunlight of a new day.
When we experience the trauma of losing a child, we are naturally going to have questions about why these kinds of things occur.  Wrestling and struggling with these questions is part of grief, and it signals that we are moving toward healing.  It is helpful if can share these questions and issues with a person who gives us the freedom to say exactly what is on our mind.  
22. Take one step at a time, one experience at a time, one moment at a time.  This allows you to grieve at a pace that is right for you.  Adopt a “slow-and-easy” approach to life.  Begin with small goals and tasks.  Make a list of things you need to remember, and check off the items on the list as you complete these.  Do not feel that you have to rush or finish a certain task within a given time limit.
23. Take your time in making important decisions.  It is wise to delay making decisions about changing your residence or work for at least a year.  This gives you a chance to regain your perspective.  Take your time in deciding what you are going to do with your deceased child’s belongings.  Do not be pressured into making such decisions by other people.  In time you will be able to determine what you want to do in regard to these matters, and it will be your decision.   
24. Be good to yourself.  Give yourself freedom to breathe.  Complete tasks at a reasonable and realistic pace.  Be loving, gentle, and patient with yourself.  Remember that you are human, and do not impose super-human expectations on yourself.  Remember also that all of the intense physical, emotional, and mental reactions you experience in response to the loss of your child will leave you tired and exhausted.  Listen to your mind and body.  Try to get the right amount of rest and nutrition.  Do not hesitate to change your daily routine and schedule to compensate for your need to take care of yourself during this difficult period of time. 
25. Learn to laugh again.  Do not feel guilty about laughing.  Laughing does not mean that you do not love the person who is deceased.  The return of laughter and a sense of humor is one of the positive signs of healing.  Remember, laughter is the “lubrication of the soul.”
26. Cultivate new methods of thinking and solving problems.  The loss of a child presents a unique problem that is different from all the other problems you have had in the past.  Begin by understanding your feelings and reactions.  Ask yourself, “How is the death of my child specifically affecting me?  How is this problem different from other problems that I have faced in the past?  What is most difficult for me to deal with in all of this?  What do I need to do to handle this problem?  What resources are available to me in dealing with this?”
27. Share your thoughts and feelings with other bereaved parents.  Listen as they describe their reactions to the death of their child (children).  What helped them to cope?  What kinds of problems did they encounter?  What was most difficult?  What did they learn?  Bereaved persons have learned priceless truths in the great “school of life,” and they share these lessons with us.  Parents who have lost children can be empathetic with newly bereaved parents because they have they have walked through the dark valley of the death of a child, and they understand the “landscape of grief.”  By becoming friends with others who have lost a child, you will discover that you are not alone; you are not losing your mind; nor are you a failure.  You are simply going through the darkness of grief, and you have helpful and loving friends who join you in this lonely and painful pilgrimage.