Bitter-sweet ...

Today is a funny day for me because today, 23 years ago, I gave birth to my only daughter. She only  lived for a few hours yet today, 23 years later, I still feel the impact of that very brief life. 

Rando & Klass, 2 American writers say that for parents the death of a child contains dimensions not seen in other losses, including a sense of failure in their parental role as ‘protector’.

And Father Dominica on the website, I-WITNESS, says that to live through the death of your child is perhaps one of the most painful experiences known to humankind. It is instinctive in parents to nourish and protect their child. Death is to be fought, even to the point of sacrificing your own life, but sometimes the fight is lost. Life is literally beyond control. The death of your child leaves you feeling helpless, guilty, powerless and broken. 

In some ways, that is absolutely true. Our brains are hardwired to expect that our children will outlive us. We assume that they will bury us and grieve for us, not the other way around. So when the unexpected happens, it can threaten destruction, sometimes even the very relationships from which the child sprang. 

But God is ultimately far more gracious than we could ever imagine. Maybe it's because He made us and so He knows us even better than we know ourselves. Or perhaps it's because He too knows the pain of the ultimate sacrifice. Whatever the reason, He provides a way for us to continue living.

For me grace has come in two ways: Samantha-Lyn was our only daughter. After that, I gave birth to three boys. So there hasn't been the constant comparison; the need for any of them to live up to the unachievable expectations of 'what might have been'.  Then there were our god-daughters, Robyn Jade and Ash. In many ways they became my daughters, something for which I can never thank Bonny and Julian enough. 

Finally, though, the greatest gift has been the realisation that although living through the death of your child is painful, healing does come. Maybe not in the way we expect or in the time that we would like, but it does come. So today when I think about Samantha-Lyn, I do think about what might have been: would she have looked more like her dad or me; would she have gone to university; what about boyfriends - would she have had any or would her dad have chased them all away with a shotgun? But then I think about those few hours when her body battled to do what it needed to do to preserve itself, and failed, and I know that her Heavenly Father (and mine) looked at that little body, saw its pain and decided that He did not want her to suffer any more. And I know that it was for her good.

Which brings me back to the title of this blog: bitter-sweet ...