Category: Grief, Trauma, & Resilience

I came to hate the hospital. I feared its bureaucracy—the faceless paternalism, the quiet erosion of our agency. With each visit, it took control of my child, my family, her body. We weren’t being helped. We were being swallowed whole by its vast, impersonal maw.

People say [unkind] things to relieve themselves of feelings of pain, anxiety, and loss, not to offer you any relief. It is, in fact, a denial of your humanity to say those things.

“There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.” (U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the death of his first son at age three).

What person could possibly handle all this, and such a fragile child, with limited help, and not scream at some point?