Lord Jesus, our child is gone.
There are sentences a parent should never have to say.
This is one of them.
We knew that children could die. We knew, somewhere in our minds, that terrible things happen in this world.
But knowing that such suffering exists is completely different from discovering that it has entered our own home.
This was not supposed to be our story.
Parents are supposed to watch their children grow.
We were supposed to count birthdays.
Take pictures.
Buy larger clothes.
Watch interests develop.
Hear laughter change as childhood became adolescence.
Wonder what our child would become.
We were supposed to grow older first.
We were never supposed to learn how to live in a world where our child had lived—and then did not.
Jesus, we do not know what to do with this.
There may be a crib that no longer needs to be used.
A bedroom exactly as it was left.
Toys.
Clothes.
A favorite blanket.
A bottle.
A pacifier.
A pair of shoes.
A drawing.
A photograph.
A lock of hair.
A stuffed animal that suddenly feels unbearably precious.
Ordinary objects have become sacred because our child touched them.
Help us decide what to do with these things slowly.
Do not let anyone rush us.
If we need the room unchanged for a while, let it remain.
If seeing everything becomes unbearable and we need someone we trust to help, give us permission to ask.
There is no correct timetable for this.
Lord, some parents had only minutes or hours with their baby.
Some had days.
Some had months.
Some had years.
Some held their child while that little life ended.
Some received a telephone call.
Some walked into a hospital expecting healing and walked out without their child.
Some experienced sudden death.
Some watched illness take their child slowly.
Some had time to say goodbye.
Some did not.
But every one of them is left with the same impossible reality:
My child should be here.
Jesus, when people search for words, protect grieving parents from explanations that wound more than they comfort.
Do not let anyone tell them they needed another angel.
Do not let anyone imply that God took their child because heaven somehow needed that child more than the parents did.
Do not let careless words make God appear cruel.
Death is an enemy.
You Yourself wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
You did not stand outside human grief and tell people that tears showed weak faith.
You wept.
So we will weep too.
And Jesus, if anger comes, receive it.
If we ask:
Why?
receive the question.
If we say:
This is unfair.
receive that too.
If prayer becomes impossible and all we can do is sit before You in silence, let silence become prayer.
If we are angry with You, do not let our anger frighten us away from You.
You are large enough to receive the truth of our broken hearts.
Lord, protect the marriage of parents grieving a child.
Grief can make two people who suffered the same loss feel strangely far apart.
One may cry constantly.
The other may rarely cry.
One may need to speak the child’s name every day.
The other may only be able to say it occasionally.
One may want photographs everywhere.
The other may find them painful.
One may return to work because routine is the only thing holding life together.
The other may wonder how anyone can possibly return to ordinary life.
Do not let them interpret different grief as different love.
They both loved their child.
Help them reach for one another even when neither has anything left to give.
Let them say:
“I don’t know how to help you, but I am still here.”
Protect siblings too, Lord.
Children may grieve in ways adults do not expect.
They may cry and then play.
They may ask the same questions repeatedly.
They may worry that they will die too.
They may secretly wonder whether something they said, thought, or did caused their sibling’s death.
Free them from that fear.
Let adults speak honestly with them in ways appropriate to their age.
Let them remember their brother or sister.
Let them laugh without guilt.
Let them grow without feeling that growing means leaving their sibling behind.
Remember the grandparents.
There is a particular agony in watching your own child suffer the death of their child.
They grieve the grandchild they loved while also wishing they could somehow absorb their son or daughter’s pain.
Hold them too.
Lord, there may also be guilt.
A thousand questions beginning with:
What if?
What if we had gone to the doctor sooner?
What if we had noticed something?
What if we had chosen differently?
What if I had been there?
What if I had checked one more time?
What if I had known?
Where genuine responsibility exists, lead us toward truth, forgiveness, reconciliation, and mercy.
But where grief is simply searching desperately for someone to blame, protect us from punishing ourselves for things we could not have known or controlled.
Jesus, help us survive the calendar.
The birthday.
The anniversary.
The day our child died.
Christmas.
Easter.
Mother’s Day.
Father’s Day.
Family photographs.
School milestones.
Graduations that will not happen.
Weddings we once imagined.
Every year may contain moments when we calculate:
This is how old my child would be now.
Be there.
And Lord, help us when other people stop saying our child’s name because they are afraid mentioning the child will make us sad.
We are already thinking about our child.
Sometimes hearing the name is not a reminder of death.
It is a reminder that someone else remembers the life.
Give us people who are willing to say:
“Tell me about your child.”
Let us tell the stories.
The funny ones.
The beautiful ones.
The ordinary ones.
Let us remember the sound of the laugh.
The expressions.
The little habits.
The things that drove us crazy and that we would give anything to experience once more.
Do not let death become the only thing anyone remembers about our child’s life.
Our child was more than the way he or she died.
Our child lived.
And that life mattered.
Mary, Mother of Sorrows, you stood beneath the Cross and watched your Son die.
There are no easy words to say to a parent standing in that place.
So do not give us easy words.
Just stand beside us.
When we cannot pray, pray for us.
When we cannot hold ourselves together, hold us beneath your mantle.
St. Joseph, protector of the Holy Family, remain close to grieving fathers who may feel they failed in their deepest instinct to protect their child.
Remind them that love is not measured by whether they could prevent every tragedy.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, surround grieving mothers with your maternal tenderness.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, intercede before Jesus in the Eucharist for families carrying the unbearable absence of a child.
And Jesus, You entered death Yourself.
You know the tomb from the inside.
Christian hope does not require us to pretend death is acceptable.
Our hope is that death does not have the final word.
So when we profess the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, help those words become more than something we recite at Mass.
Make them something we can cling to.
We entrust our child to the mercy of God.
We trust the One who created this child, knew this child completely, and loves with a love greater even than ours.
And yet, Jesus, we still want our child here.
Faith does not erase that.
We would still choose another bedtime.
Another hug.
Another mess.
Another laugh.
Another ordinary Tuesday.
Another chance to say:
“I love you.”
Until the day when every tear is wiped away, teach us how to carry both things:
I trust God.
And:
I miss my child terribly.
Let neither cancel the other.
And when joy eventually returns in small pieces, protect us from guilt.
Laughing does not mean we have forgotten.
Celebrating does not mean we have moved on from our child.
Living does not betray the dead.
Help us learn instead how to carry our child’s memory forward as part of who we are.
Lord, let this child’s life continue producing love.
Perhaps because this child lived, someone will become gentler.
Someone will forgive sooner.
Someone will hold their children longer.
Someone will help another grieving family.
Someone will return to prayer.
Someone will defend a vulnerable child.
Someone will love more courageously because they learned how precious life is.
Not because the death was good.
It was not.
But because You can bring goodness even from places we would never have chosen.
Jesus, we place our child into Your hands again today.
We may have to do it again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And many days after that.
Until then, remember this little one with us.
Let the child’s name remain spoken.
Let the love remain.
Let the memories remain.
And when the grief becomes so heavy that we cannot imagine carrying it for another lifetime, give us only enough strength for the next hour.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Until someday, by Your mercy, the separation ends.
Jesus, hold our child until we can hold our child again.
Mary, Mother of Sorrows, pray for us.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
Blessed Fulton Sheen, pray for us.
Always remember Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Holy Family! Help us to be a holy family and pray for us!
Amen.