When a child dies

On Sunday the 31st of August this year, the weather was really crap. We had arrived in Ballito the Friday before for a one week break, and as luck would have it, or not it seems, the weather was revolting: overcast, windy and freezing. We decided to take the kids to the beach for a walk, despite the cold gusts lashing at our faces.

There were hundreds of dead cuttlefish laying on the beach, along with a weird brown scum on the waves. A very strange occurrence indeed. Alex spent ages picking up discarded cuttlebones to add to his shell collection.

On the way back to the car, Alex and Gary were far ahead of us, Caris and I were dawdling, chatting about the beach and looking at the succulents growing on the sand dunes. A woman walking with her teenaged daughter smiled at us, and for a moment I stared at her face, trying to place where I knew her from. She just kept on smiling, almost as if she too was trying to place me. I didn’t know her, but she looked so much like a friend that I had known in high school, someone I haven’t seen in person in over 20 years. Someone whose gorgeous children regularly appear on my Facebook feed. It was a very weird serendipitous moment.

The next morning, while browsing Facebook, my timeline showed that this old friend was being tagged in a lot of posts, most preceded with “sorry for your loss” and “RIP”. After visiting her profile and reading the many, many posts, I learned that her young son, Joshua, had been killed in a motor cross accident. He was only 10 years old.

For a moment, my heart stood still and I shed tears for a child I did not know in person, for a fellow mom whose heart had been irreparably broken. For a dad who has lost his son.

My timeline is still littered with images of this beautiful boy and posts offering condolences to his grieving parents. My heart jumps into my mouth every time I see one. My heart breaks all over again. I wonder how they are coping. If they will ever be FINE. Through the facade of social media they seem so strong: Thanking everyone for their support, and posthumously praising their beautiful boy’s worldly achievements. I do not think that I would have even one single ounce of the courage and strength that they seem to have. I can not even imagine how painful this process must be for them. How painful it will always be. I have tremendous admiration for these two incredible parents.

Losing a child is the most unbearable thought, something my brain refuses to compute. I feel paralyzed at the thought of losing one of my children. It is something that is just not normal. I don’t think that the age of the child matters, losing a child is something that no parent should ever have to experience. It is the single biggest fear that I have.

I wonder if the posts that people write help console their broken hearts, and if the kind words of others are helping to heal a wound that will surely never heal. And if by knowing how many people loved and admired their son makes them proud of the boy they raised. I hope so, as I have written some of these posts too.

Rest in peace beautiful Joshua.