Q:Sometime before Christmas, my niece and her husband lost their seven-year-old daughter. She was killed in a car accident.
Our family has pulled together and everyone is doing what they can to support my niece and her husband, but of course it is never enough. All of our hearts are breaking as we watch Mom and Dad bravely struggle to keep things going with their other two children.
Apart from calling in professional counsellors and drawing more support from our church people, can we do anything else to help this family?
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A:Your family is clearly facing a difficult challenge. I am not sure that anything can be more heart-wrenching than the death of a young child.
Your problem is that you can never give your niece and her husband what they so desperately want, which is to have their little girl back home, safe and sound.
The most likely resource for your niece and her family is a group called Compassionate Friends.
It is a self-help group, organized by people who have struggled through the deaths of their own children and who have an idea of how helpless and desperate grieving parents can feel.
I understand that Compassionate Friends has support groups throughout Canada and at least in those major cities nearest you. You can find contact information by checking through the search engines on your computer.
Don’t discount professional counsellors.
Right now, your niece and her husband need each other as much as is possible. They need to be open about their inevitable feelings of guilt and they need to be careful not to blame each other when they are struggling with some of that anger that seems to go along with guilt.
Feeling of guilt and anger are natural at times such as these, but they are also stressful. They could hurt everyone in the family.
Good counsellors will help your niece and her husband talk through their difficult feelings while preserving those hidden gems of love that in the long run will sanctify their relationship.
Your niece and her husband need time. I do not know that anyone ever fully recovers from the grief of a lost child, but to some extent things can get better for the family.
The first couple of years after a child dies are the hardest. After that, it gradually gets a bit easier for everyone.
The silver lining throughout all of this, if there is one, is that your niece’s relationship with her husband may get stronger.
Only 16 percent of families who have lost children end up in the divorce courts, which is considerably less than the national average of 40 to 50 percent.
Many couples who survive their tragedies talk about the strength they have discovered in their marriages when they were hit with the initial impact of their grief.
I hope that you and your extended family have enough faith in your niece and her husband to encourage them to find the strength within themselves and for themselves that other families have discovered. It is a moment to cherish.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact:
