I keep in touch with my former colleague and friend Michelle from my old school I worked at before moving back to the States. She told me of some sad news that one of the students there, who was not my student but I certainly knew him (and his brother too) had gotten lukemia. He was just a little kid -- grade 3 by this time. Michelle told me in an email today that he had died yesterday. How swift that disease moves. The school will be helping with the funeral and I guess all the teachers will be attending the funeral on Monday.
Now that I'm a parent, I understand the parent/child bond and I just cannot imagine something like this happening to Aidan. Do all parents go through this agony of imagining their beloved child dying or being hurt? I just don't know how the family of this boy copes. I understand that many marriages are hurt by the death of a child, each parent's grief tears him or her apart from their spouse. Then you gotta stay strong for the remaining sibling when you feel like dying inside yourself. How do parents go on, I wonder.
Now believe me, I'm not saying that child free people are unempathetic--not at all--but purely from my own experience as going through a significant portion of my adulthood childfree, and now as a parent, the stories of tragedy that impact families upsets me far more than it used to because I imagine my own baby in the same situation and my heart cries.
My thoughts and prayers are with that family in Bangkok.
2 comments:
I am very sorry to hear about the loss of the child. My heart and prayers go out to the parents. I cannot even imagine how much pain and grief they are in right now. As parents you expect your children to live past your time, not the other way around. I am so very sorry!
I'm so sorry for their loss and for yours. I can't imagine going through that either.
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