There is a club that nobody wants to join.  It happens after a devastating event. It has no official name, but the event itself makes you an automatic member.  This club consists of people who have outlived a child.

Sometimes, you don’t even realize that you are a part of this club, because you are shocked and bereft and perhaps incapable of even thinking clearly.  But then it hits you. I remember quite clearly when it hit me.

I was receiving the people who came to pay their respects at the funeral home.  As people stood in line, I began to notice friends and neighbors who had also experienced this tragedy.  I gasped at the realization that my husband and I were not the only ones. Of course I knew this, intellectually, but to see these people and remember being in the opposite role, that of paying respects instead of being the bereaved, was jarring.

It happened again and again throughout the day.  There was a strange feeling of connectedness and empathy and grief. My husband and I were definitely not alone.  There was a group of us, a club so to speak. How was it that I didn’t know this before?

In today’s culture, we have a tendency to think that this loss is uncommon.  But that is not true. Just thinking back in my own family, I began to remember people who had lost children to death.  My father’s parents had lost a daughter to crib death. I had an aunt who had multiple miscarriages and then lost her only daughter at the age of 2.  My aunt and uncle lost a son who suffered greatly before dying. And that is just in my side of the family.

I decided to research statistics of child mortality.  While today the mortality of children in the U.S. is lower than 1%, in the 1960’s 1 in 4 children died before the age of 5.  Most of the deaths of the people I knew growing up died as a result of accidents, but there were illnesses and other causes as well.

The reason I wanted to know this, is to see this event as a part of life that touches others we know, and it always has been so. It is not to diminish the grief one must go through in any way.  But it is a reminder that we are not alone. And we who share this experience are in a community that can give each other support in a way that can help us all.