Everyone worries about knowing what to say to someone like me in a time like this, but that is a worry that is impossible to relieve because there are no words that can make it make sense or ease the pain.
What I found most comforting in the hours and days immediately after it ended were my friends who came by just to sit with me, cry with me, listen to Lawrence stories or just to sit in silence.
When a husband or wife dies, the surviving partner is a widow or widower. A child who loses their parents is an orphan. Am I still a mom? There is literally no word to describe a parent who has lost a child.
Well, not in the English language anyway. After some online searching, I found an article by Duke English professor, Karla FC Holloway, that talked about the etymology of widow(er), it comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “empty”. There is another word in Sanskrit that means “against natural order”, and it has been applied to a parent who’s child has died. The word is vilomah. And there is nothing more unnatural or abnormal than burying your baby.
Unless you live in the United States, where since 2020, firearms are the leading cause of death for children, beating out car accidents and drug overdoses. And there are plenty of words I could use to describe that fact: ignorant, disgusting and fucking PREVENTABLE! Our kids aren’t dying from incurable diseases.
Our babies are dying because people in this country value their property and right to bear arms more than they value the lives of our kids and that is unacceptable.
After the end 