A Belated Father’s Day Wish

I couldn’t post on Father’s Day. I wanted to but found myself stumped. It’s tough to write about male grief when it is so different from my own experience. I have given up trying to understand my husband’s response to our son’s death. It may never click with me – and that’s okay.

Men and women grieve so differently on top of the fact that every individual person will have a different experience and need support in a way that is unique to them.

What I do know for sure is that marriage is difficult after the loss of a child. For some, it brings them closer, for others it tears them apart.

Recently I met an older woman who has also lost a child. (Sometimes I feel like I am a magnet for people like me, but then I realize that there are simply are a lot of us. A sad reality.) After many years, this woman still feels the ache for her child. After their baby’s death, she and her husband divorced she told me.

“It’s common I hear, people getting divorced and splitting up after this kind of thing,” I responded. Then she told me why.

“My husband felt like a failure,” she said very matter of fact.

Pow! Her words hit me. I had never thought about this possibility but it makes sense. Men want to be the protector and provider for their family. When something like this happens and they are helpless, I can totally see that the feeling of failure would accompany their grief.

Photograph copyright Alexis Marie Chute

My belated Father’s Day wish is that dad’s of lost children would understand that their experience makes them no less a father, a husband or a man. Human life is tragically and yet beautifully flawed. Death is a part of life; one cannot exist without the other. We mothers and wives know, if you could change our circumstances, you would. If you had the power to make us happy and heal our lives you would. Deep down, we know you are doing the best you can.

Even though your child is not with you, you are still his or her father and always will be.

As marriage is so tricky after this kind of loss, please stick with us ladies, open up and be vulnerable. Even for just a moment. Please do not give up on your marriage, or yourself. The cruel part of having a child precede you in death is that life is all mixed up for us who live on. Yet we live. I believe with all my heart, as we move forward, we are stronger together.