How to Support Grieving Parents

Cremations in Bassett, VA often are for children who've died young. Whether the loss is a baby, a small child, a teenager, or a young adult, losing a child is an incredibly devastating experience for the parents. The grief may seem inconsolable. It may be difficult to even know how to provide support, comfort, and encouragement to the parents. 

But there are definite ways that we can provide support to grieving parents. There is also one things that we should never say to parents who've lost a child. 

One way we can provide support to grieving parents is to simply be there for them and ask them if they want to talk. Our job is not to provide answers, because, in reality, we don't have any answers ourselves. Our role is to listen. 

There are so many emotions involved in death and grieving, in general, but these get amplified when a child dies. There may be a lot of anger. There may be a lot of tears and sobbing. There may be a lot of guilt. There may be a lot of questioning of faith. This is part of the process of grieving, and while it can get very intense – and may seem troublesome at times to us – it needs to happen. Parents need a safe place to just talk without judgment, without commentary, without someone trying to fix it and fix them. That's a way we can support them. 

Another way that we offer support to grieving parents is share good memories of their children with them. While this may bring on the waterworks, it will also be comforting because we aren't avoiding the fact that they had a child who mattered, who was loved, and who lives on, not only in their memories, but in the memories of others. Other people avoiding talking about a child who has died is very painful to the parents, because it's as if the child never existed. 

We can support grieving parents by contributing to any memorials they may have set up for their dead child and letting them know that we are contributing. Memorials are often set up by parents who've lost a child as a way of remembering them and ensuring that they're not forgotten. Although we may gone on with our normal lives after the deaths of other parents' children, they don't. Their lives go on, but it's new normal without the child they've lost. By remembering their child through memorial contributions, grieving parents are reassured that their dead child has not been forgotten. 

A final way that we can support grieving parents after the loss of a child is to take care of things they are in no shape to take care of in the immediate aftermath. This can be anything from mowing their lawn to setting up meal chains that provides meals (at least one hot) for a few weeks to helping them clean the house before out-of-town relatives arrive. The smallest things can make the biggest differences. 

And the one thing we should never say to grieving parents? "I know how you feel." Even if we too have lost a child, we, in fact, do not know exactly how other parents feel when their child dies. There are similarities, of course, but no two experiences are the same. 

For additional information about grief resources after cremations in Bassett, VA, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lynch Conner-Bowman Funeral Home can assist you. You can visit our funeral home at 140 Floyd Ave., Rocky Mount, VA, 24151, or you can call us today at (540) 483-5533.