Today we celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary. Sixteen thousand eight hundred and one days married. Our nineteenth anniversary, seven thousand seventy six days, since the death of our son in a firefighter training accident.
We have shared a destiny of a lifetime love chosen by two, built by two, respected by two. Lived one day at a time, thru the best and the absolute worst, always looking forward, always wanting to be closer.
Many things can destroy a marriage; few are more capable of destruction than travelling the shared grief of losing a child. The loss of a child causes a massive destruction and eventual rebuilding of the souls of both parents. We become first unrecognizable to even ourselves, and slowly we become two completely different people, assembled painfully with the bits and pieces of our blown apart souls.
We become distrustful of life itself when we lose a child. The inherent promise of life, that we should not outlive our children, has been broken for both parents. We see and feel our own pain, but we also see and feel our lover’s pain. For many, it’s just too much to travel this painful road together and marriages fail.
In simplistic terms, over years, we each fell apart, we each reassembled ourselves into very changed people, and as we slowly fell in love with life again, we slowly fell in love with each other as two different people.
The scars on our souls have intertwined as we helped each other to heal, and as we have healed, those scars shrink and have pulled our two souls closer together.
To those couples who have recently lost a child, please be patient and kind to each other. Even if nothing about today reminds you of love shared, be patient, hang on to some small bits and pieces of each other. When one sinks, swim down and pull them back up.
It is a great challenge for a marriage to survive the loss of a child. Every anniversary like today will be a reminder of that loss, but also a reminder that love has conquered that loss and kept you living and loving together. If your marriage does eventually fail, at least be able to say that you both tried and you both failed.
Be well and peaceful, build love around loss towards loving life again, towards loving each other again and deeper.
See also:https://distillinggrief.com/2023/11/30/grieving-the-loss-of-a-child-as-a-couple/