Loss of a child: Finding a way through the grief

Earlier this week, Taoiseach Michéal Martin spoke about the devastating deaths of two of his children, Ruairí and Léana.  We look at the support networks available for parents who have lost a child  

Picture: iStock 

“Life was not meant to hit you so hard” — Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s words in an article published this week as he recalled the immediate aftermath of daughter Léana’s unexpected death aged seven in 2010.

More than a decade earlier, he and wife Mary had lost their son, Ruairí, to cot death at five weeks. “Your certainties kind of ebb away a bit,” he said, as he shared with the country the devastation of losing a child.

An Taoiseach  Micheál Martin with his wife Mary and children, Micheál Aodh, Aoibhe and Cillian in Cork.

Every year in Ireland an average of 2,000 families lose a child. “We use the word ‘devastating’, but ‘devastating’ can’t encompass the magnitude,” says mum-of-four Majella Crowley, whose 13-year-old son, Daniel, died at home in Carrigaline in November 2013.

Diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia a year earlier, Daniel had undergone chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant, but tragically, says Majella, “things didn’t go his way”. She and husband, Donal — parents also to Sean, Katie, and Alannah brought their boy home from Crumlin when they knew “everything that could be done had been done”. He died two days later.

Daniel Crowley was 13 years old when he died at home in Carrigaline in 2013.   

“The birth of a child brings the greatest joy. And the loss of a child brings the greatest grief. No parent expects to bury their teenage son. It’s not the normal cycle of life. Life as you know it is gone,” says Majella, who volunteers with Anam Cara, a national bereavement support organisation for parents, set up by parents who’ve lost a child. Majella supports professional facilitators in helping newly-bereaved parents.

Bríd Carroll, chairwoman of Irish Childhood Bereavement Network (childhoodbereavement.ie) and a counselling psychotherapist working in bereavement, says the death of a child is a very unique loss because of its vast impact on the individual parent, the couple, the child’s siblings and extended family.

“Families who lose a child are left with a void for life. It doesn’t mean they can’t live again, but it’s devastating and traumatic. The pain is immense and intense. And it’s often sudden – people are thrown into the trauma of it without warning.”

When Anam Cara CEO Sharon Vard lost her daughter, Rachel, in 2004, there wasn’t even a dedicated leaflet for bereaved parents. Now Anam Cara offers an information pack with eight leaflets written by bereaved parents for bereaved parents, plus a website with resources.

Anam Cara Book of Remembrance.

“For parents in that initial, shell-shocked place, looking into a bleak future without their child, these resources don’t make things easier but they give hope — they’re reading about other parents who’ve found a way through. Because, in the beginning, you don’t think this is survivable.”

Majella didn’t know any bereaved parents when Daniel died. “One day I googled ‘how to cope with loss of a child’ and found Anam Cara. I went to parent meetings and met other bereaved parents. That’s extremely powerful because they understand. And you see them further down the road, you see them coping, they’ve survived this, and you know you’ll cope — because they are — and you can share how to cope.”

Crowds attending the annual Danny Crowley Memorial Swim

Bríd Carroll says it’s helpful to view grief as a dual process. Like a pendulum swinging between two halves of a sphere — one half loss-oriented (managing the loss) and the other restorative-oriented (managing daily tasks of life).

“A parent might be sitting at the table in tears — and in five minutes they’re picking themselves up to get the kids from school. This moving in and out all the time really describes grief’s ebb and flow. Allowing ourselves to swing between our loss and our day-to-day tasks gives us resilience.”

What’s also profound for parents is telling their child’s story. “Being able to remember your child, all the details and nuances of them, the character they were, the legacy they left — being able to tell their story allows for connection that goes beyond grieving, really feeling the essence of your child is still with you in your life,” says Carroll, who explains parents need a witness to hear this story.

“It’s saying ‘my child existed, I was a parent to them’. It validates their parenting.”

See: Anam Cara