Archives at Zinester: June 12, 2007 - Special Treat - Sharon Bryant. Storytime

I have always loved to write. I love to meet people and listen to stories that they tell. My own life has been colorful with traveling the major part of my life. That has given me the opportunity to meet many people and hear more than the average amount of stories.

Yet, I've always leaned towards losing a child when I write. I know the pain. I know the shock, heartache, and the struggle a bereaved parent feels when they have buried their child. My own son left this world too soon at the age of five-years-old from a tragic accident. He was my only child at the time. He was my life.

I can remember the nights, weeks, months and even years I stared out a window asking the same question over and over....why?

Why my child? I remember the sleepless nights for so long when my nerves would not allow me to rest.

I knew no one else who had lost a child. I was alone. Alone in a world where no one seemed to suffer the way I was suffering.

There were no support groups back in the 1970's. Death of a child was a subject no one wanted to talk about. I lived in a big city surrounded with many stores, high buildings, and tons of people. And yet....I felt alone.

It was over twenty years before I began my work with bereavement. I had a website built in my son's memory, hoping that in some small way, it would help another parent who had to walk this road.

Just last night a mom sent me a photo of her baby, born way too early. She wants me to put the baby on my website. I looked at that photo and it tugged my heart. Perfectly formed, so tiny. Born at 22 weeks.

Most people who have not lost a child cannot even imagine what they would feel if they did lose a child. I wouldn't wish it on my worse enemy.

It took me years before I could get my life back together and get the guilt, the hate, the hard core feeling of unfairness out of my system when my son died. Today the guilt is gone, the hate has lessened, but I will always feel it was unfair.

Just today a friend came to me for help. A family member, a young woman, was killed last night by a drunk driver.

It is endless. There are photos backed up to get them on my website. Statistics are that every eleven seconds, a child dies somewhere in this world.

And knowing that they still have to go where I've already been, my heart always goes out to any parent who loses a child.

"You'll have another child. He's better off where he is now. This will pass and you will put it behind you. As soon as you find closure, this will be in the back of your mind. How come you don't want to go see a movie with me? Don't start talking about death, think of something funny for once. Move on with your life."

Those are things I have been told when my son died. There were times had I had the energy I would have choked people who said things to me that ripped my heart out again.

I could barely get out of bed mornings let alone think about going to a movie. And closure.....closure is the end. Final, forever.

My son is part of me, he always was and he always will be. There is no closure. I loved him when he was alive, and I love him in death. I am his mother.

After all these years, I think I have summed it up in one sentence. "We learn to go on and live with pain."

People don't realize that we still look the same when our child dies. On the outside. But if they could see the inside, they would see a gaping wound that never totally heals. A partial wound with a partial scar. That wound can be opened back up in a split second with one remark from someone who has no inkling the pain a parent lives with.

Yes, we survive, but the struggle to do so is the hardest thing any bereaved parent will ever endure. I have lost my parents, a sibling and a beautiful set of grandparents......and my little boy. Death hurts anyone who loves, but losing my child was the death that changed my life forever.

I try to show bereaved parents that through the foggy world we live in once our child dies, we can still go on.

Our lives were changed in the blink of an eye. Whether it be a car accident, a murder, a tree, an illness, the pain is the same for all who have had to bury a child. Age is not a factor. We have buried our child. It is not supposed to be that way.

My heart goes out to those who give birth to a stillborn. I remember a mom who sent me a photo taken in the hospital, the only photo she will ever have of her tiny lifeless baby. Her husband and her were standing together holding him and the pain on their faces is etched in my mind forever. How horrific. How unfair.

One parent I know lost her son when someone knocked him over a counter and his head hit the cement floor. Her own father who was more interested in his new girlfriend did not even attend the funeral, said he had cruise tickets and he and his girlfriend was going.

I can't even imagine that happening to me. Thank God, my dad stood by my side the whole time. When I fell, he picked me up. When I stumbled, he was there telling me I would one day walk again. When I was losing my mind, he begged me to get help. Him and my mom both. I never thought about how they felt. My pain was too intense. They lost their only grandchild. I wasn't capable of feeling anyone else's pain. I couldn't get out of the black pit of insanity I was slowing falling into.

I write because I hope to one day educate those who care about someone who has lost a child. I write because it is a drive within me to help. I can not accept that my son's death was 'just one of those things that happen.'

I believe we can take a tragedy, reach out our hand, and help someone else who is walking behind us walking the same road.

I believe it's not what we gather, but what we scatter that shows the kind of life we have lived.