I have lived (until recently) a rather charmed life. I didn't attend a funeral until I was 36 years old, and then it was for my 91 year old grandfather. It's hard to feel extreme sadness for the death of someone who has lived a long and full life. I didn't know death.
Before M's death the only bad things my family had experienced were my father's heart attack/surgery (which turned out fine - 12 years later he is healthier than ever), my mother's brain tumor/surgery (also the best possible outcome - no cancer and full removal of and recovery from the tumor). My husband had experienced harder things, the death of his beloved grandfather (in his mid-fifties) and the very early unexpected death of his father. J's dad died only a few weeks after I met J. I wish I could say that I had learned empathy going through that with him, but I did not. He swept it under a rug, dealt with it internally, if at all, and I acted as though nothing happened except on rare occasions. Probably not the most empathetic way of dealing with it.
Obviously when bad things happen to other people I felt sad for them, but I really did not know how they were feeling. That is part of why I am writing here. To try to capture those feelings, so others might have some idea, even if they still can't imagine. The death of your child is a special kind of pain. It is, I think, different than even other deaths. I feel this in my gut and my husband confirms, that for him at least, it is completely different that the pain he felt when his father died when J was only 16.
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