What is Normal after your child dies?

Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you 

realise someone important is missing from all the important

events in your family's life. 

Normal is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for 

Birthdays, X-mas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, New Years, 

Valentine's Day, July 4th and Passover. 

Normal is feeling like you can't sit another minute without 

getting up and screaming, because you just don't like to sit through anything anymore. 

Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what if's

& why didn't I's go through your head constantly. 

Normal is reliving the moment your baby/child died 

continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head

to make it go away. 

Normal is having the TV on the minute you walk into the 

house to have noise, because the silence is deafening. 

Normal is staring at every child who looks like they are your

child’s age. And then thinking of the age they would be now. 

Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it,

because it will never happen. 

Normal is every happy event in your life always being backed

up with sadness lurking close behind, because of the hole in

your heart. 

Normal is telling the story of your child's death as if it were an

everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror 

in someone's eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of your "normal." 

Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how

to honour your childs’s memory and their birthdays and 

survive these days. And trying to find the balloon or flag that fit's the occasion. Happy Birthday? Not really. 

Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of

something special my child loved. Thinking how they would 

love it, but how they are not here to enjoy it. 

Normal is having some people afraid to mention my child’s

name. 

Normal is making sure that others remember them.

Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with

their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever. 

Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock,

the grieving gets worse, not better. 

Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their

life to this loss, unless they too have lost a child. Nothing compares.

NOTHING.

Even if your child is in the remotest part of the earth away

from you - it doesn't compare. 

Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child

is unnatural. 

Normal is taking pills, and trying not to cry all day, because

you know your mental health depends on it. 

Normal is realising you do cry every day.

Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone but

someone stricken with grief over the loss of their child. 

Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel

with chat buddies who have also lost a child.  

Normal is not listening to people make excuses for God.

"God may have done this because…" 

I know my child is in "heaven," but hearing people trying to

think up excuses as to why a fantastic young child was taken from this earth is not appreciated and makes absolutely no sense to this grieving mother. 

Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned

the house, did the laundry or if there is any food. 

Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say

you have two children or one child, because you will never 

see this person again and it is not worth explaining that your child is dead. 

And yet when you say you have one child to avoid that

problem, you feel horrible as if you have betrayed the dead child. 

Normal is asking God why he took your child's life instead of

yours and asking if there even is a God. 

Normal is knowing you will never get over this loss, not in a

day nor a million years. 

Normal is having therapists agree with you that you will never

"really" get over the pain and that there is nothing they can do to help you because they know only bringing back your child back from the dead could possibly make it "better." 

Normal is learning to lie to everyone you meet and telling

them you are fine. You lie because it makes others uncomfortable if you cry. You've learned it's easier to lie to them then to tell them the truth that you still feel empty and it's probably never going to get any better -- ever. 

And last of all...

Normal is hiding all the things that have become "normal" for

you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are "normal."