Nameless Grief

Why is it hard to accept,
the death of a child?

Is it because…

When you lose your husband,
you’re a widow;

When you lose you wife,
you’re a widower;

When you lose you parents,
you’re an orphan;

But when you lose a child,
what will you become?

—

04.01.2016
©2016 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved.

Photo credit: Unsplash

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DISCLAIMER: My dear friend Vijaya of StrangeLander 2015  shared to my two beautiful pieces with almost the same words as this poem:

“A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That’s how awful the loss is.”

― Jay Neugeboren, An Orphan’s Tale

and

“Brenda: You know what I find interesting? If you lose a spouse, you’re called a widow, or a widower. If you’re a child and you lose your parents, then you’re an orphan. But what’s the word to describe a parent who loses a child? I guess that’s just too fucking awful to even have a name.”

As a writer, I always try to honour intellectual properties mostly words from someone’s mind. I personally haven’t read these two lovely pieces but we somehow shared the same theme, a parent’s loss, hence we share almost the same words.

For my part, this poem is written and inspired by the story by the death of Courageous Caitie. She is a 3-year old Filipina who has been diagnosed with a very rare type of blood cancer. Her family flew from the Philippines to Singapore to have a concrete diagnosis, as no local doctors were able to identify her illness.

I actually posted about her death here. So there. No plagiarism, no bad intention was intended when I wrote and posted this piece.

God bless everyone.