When Your Child Dies

When your child dies, you become a member of an exclusive club that no one wants to join. You are a lifetime member of that club, because the pain never goes away. The motto of that club could be “what could have been”. That’s what I have been thinking about today. Today is dark anniversary day. On this day, 33 years ago, my first child, Amy, took her last breaths in a Houston hospital where she was receiving experimental chemotherapy. She died as the dawn was breaking on another hot and humid Texas day. She came back home in the cargo hold of an airplane, most likely not the one we flew home on. The sad ending of a long hard-fought battle.

I had a business class in college where we learned about opportunity cost. It’s when you make a business decision and have to give up other things. An example with my counseling practice is deciding to work evenings to get more clients. The opportunity cost is all the fun I could be having on those weeknights if I wasn’t working. Regarding Amy, the opportunity costs were forced upon me.

I lost the opportunity to see her in cap and gown at her high school graduation. I missed seeing her fall in love and date. I missed walking her down the aisle at her wedding. I missed seeing her become a new mother. But it’s not just the milestones. I missed the everyday life stuff too. I missed seeing her relationship with her brother grow as they matured together into adulthood. I missed seeing her interact with her sister, Emma, 31 years her junior. Amy would be 50 years old if she were still alive. She would have loved social media!! We could have talked about music, she never convincing me that Guns n Roses was better than the Beatles. We would have had lots of fun.

The word missed was used a lot in that last paragraph. But it doesn’t even begin to represent how much I truly miss her, even thirty-three years after she left us. As I get older, it seems that her absence is even more pronounced. I’m not sure what that means! Just thinking about mortality, I guess.

On this dark anniversary I will, of course think of her more. I will pull out a scrapbook I made of her life and reflect on what was and what might have been. I encourage all of you to use August 21 as the day you begin to truly cherish those in your life and tell them often, in your own way, how much you love them. You will never regret it.