Grieving Parents Find Peace And A Pathway Forward
GRAPEVINE (CBSDFW.COM) - It's the loss that leaves most of us struggling to find the right words. "Child loss is the topic nobody wants to talk about," says Crys Kelly of Grapevine. She lost her four year old daughter Alexa in 2008, when she was just four years old.
"You're not supposed to lose your children," says Kelly. "But, what you can find is that your child can live through you—and as you grow and as you gather strength—you can live a life that your child would be proud of and doing that will keep their memory alive better than anything else."
Kelly has found that sweet place of peace and bears little resemble to the grieving mother that she says "sobbed" her way through her first local meeting with a chapter of The Compassionate Friends. The non-profit's national convention is underway in Dallas this weekend—providing workshops and support for parents who have lost a child at any age.
"What our conference is all about is finding hope," says Alan Pederson, the group's Executive Director. "People tend to understand grief to the level that they've experienced it, so people don't know what to say because they can't imagine the experience."
So what do you say to a grieving parent?
"Tell them 'I am here to hurt with you'," says Pederson, "and be willing to let them grieve in their own time and their own way and just walk with them."
And while grieving parents tell me that you never truly get over the loss of a child, they insist that with the right support, you can get through it. And that's what many have found with local Compassionate Friends chapters… places, they say, that never tire of hearing your child's name.
"We want people to talk about them," says Jeff Martin of Fort Worth. His 29-year-old stepson was killed in a car crash in June of 2007. "We don't want people to just ignore it like it didn't happen." Martin says he initially attended a Compassionate Friends meeting to support his wife—and soon realized that he needed help coping with the loss as well.
"We don't build houses, we don't cure disease," says Kelly, "we don't do anything that you can hold in your hands. But, what we do is we mend each other's hearts… and that's a priceless treasure that can never be replaced."
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