The death of a child, and its accompanying feeling of powerlessness, go against the most basic of parental instincts ~ that of protecting your offspring ~ the burden this emotion places upon you is doubly great. Faced with such a catastrophic finality, bereaved parents all too often believe they should have been able to avert the tragedy. When the feeling of powerlessness sets in, they find themselves in the sorry situation of having to deal not only with their bereavement but also with their inability to have prevented it.

You, who have endured so much, must also deal with this double emotion. Powerlessness is one of the true quagmires of grief that you will encounter and one of the most painful stages in coming to terms with grief. You can measure the importance of coping with powerlessness by the sheer weight of its difficulty. Some psychiatrists claim bereaved parents approach powerlessness the same way they individually deal with any thwarting situation. Anger, rage, a sense of frustration, fear, weeping, hysteria. Powerlessness encompasses them all. They maintain also, because of the stress placed upon mothering and fathering by our society, that grieving over a child magnifies this sense of impotence more than any other death. Even in the case of powerlessness, the roles of men and women are expected to play have a part in how grief is handled. In many instances, the feeling of a lack of power to alter circumstances is a greater problem to a father than to a mother.

One upper-middle-income family nursed their daughter for nearly two years before she succumbed to cancer at the age of twelve. Despite nearly unlimited funds spent to save her, and the most tender and loving care, she died. The parents have taken a concrete step toward coping with their grief ~ they are members of an organization of bereaved parents ~ but they have not yet come to terms with powerlessness. The man spends seven days a week at his office; his wife claims any number of physical ailments, which her doctors say are manifestations of her grief. "It has been three years since our daughter died and I don't think I will ever accept it. I feel I should have been able to save her," said the father.

Many would agree that a man who has successfully worked and seen his efforts bear fruit financially is more accustomed to bending events to meet his wishes. That he was unable to control happenings surrounding the most important thing in his life ~ saving his daughter ~ might be quite difficult to accept for such a father. Indeed, such a dreadful occurrence would be difficult for any man because a father is a father regardless of his social and economic level.

While not usually possessed of business triumphs, a mother, too, still feels she should have been able to control her child's health. By the time Jenny was born doctors never spared Lyn the knowledge that she had a very sick daughter. During the first two years of Jenny's life she was in a hospital every month for upper respiratory infections. "Jenny would be in the hospital anywhere from 5 days to 28 days," Lyn said. "It seems like she would no sooner get out and then back again we would go. Jenny still was in and out of the hospital during the remaining years of her life...but not as frequently. Jenny couldn't communicate with us like normal children and there was one time that she was in the hospital and I knew that she was in extreme pain...but no one would listen to me. Her family doctor finally arrived and did listen. (He had previously lost a son the year before.) They took Jenny to x-ray and found out that she had a broken leg. You see her bones were very brittle because of her condition, and I was finally thankful that someone did listen. A mother knows when something is wrong no matter if their child cannot communicate as other children do. And then came the final time that she was hospitalized and died. I felt so helpless during all of the times that she was in, but they were all beyond my control. She was always in God's hands," Lyn said.

Perhaps the most powerless-feeling group of parents are those whose children's death resulted from accidents. Aside from the fact that any child's death leaves one with the feeling of utter pointlessness, an accident death seems to bring about an intensified sense of futility. Here we have a healthy and hopefully happy child who goes for a drive, swim, or bicycle ride and dies. This is a youngster who left his home, probably yelling, "Bye, Mom/Dad. See you later," and simply never came home again.

In contrast to your experience with a sick child, another group of parents who know powerlessness particularly well are those whose sons died because they were quite healthy ~ healthy enough to be drafted or served in the armed forces. Imagine the feelings of a father or mother whose son died in Vietnam or Saudi. Not only did they have to contend with grief, they also had to bear the anger over the war (Vietnam) that was felt by many Americans. These parents had a dead son while people insisted he had died in a useless, pointless, and immoral conflict. Waste? Futility? Lack of power to control events?

There are some parents, though, in this same situation, who are blessed with a strong sense of patriotism. Often it is strong enough to tide them through the feeling of powerlessness. "I loved my boy," said one father. "But I was proud when he came home in his army uniform. I knew there was a danger he could be killed. After all, people get killed in cars too. At least he did something with his life. He died for his country."

Another mother strongly disagrees with taking any comfort in that concept. A medical receptionist whose only son was killed in Vietnam, has grown bitter. From a laughing friendly woman, friends say she has turned into a hostile person. "Nothing is worth dying for when you leave people behind in such pain," she tells friends. "Nothing." The woman spends much time and energy bemoaning the fact that she did not push her son to remain in college, thus deferring him from the draft. "We would still have him had I argued hard enough," she cries.

Still another set of parents who know the depths are those whose children die as a result of violence ~ an ever-increasing phenomenon in our society. Imagine the shock felt by one elderly couple when they came face to face with the man found guilty of murdering their cab-driver son. The pair were Christmas shopping in a department store and happened to stand directly behind the man at a check-out counter. The husband who ran to the phone and called the prosecutor's office was told the killer was not an escaped felon. Instead, he had been declared sane by psychiatrists after a year in a state mental facility.

Another couple from an entirely different economic and social background feels just as intensely the sensation of powerlessness. Their daughter's fellow high-school students had voted her the girl most likely to succeed. She had charm, intellect, and money. She was stabbed to death. The couple are certain their son-in-law did the killing, despite intensive investigation by police refuting this belief. They have hired private investigators to help prove their contention, but the investigators have turned up nothing to change the police view of the case. The son-in-law abandoned his child, an eight-year-old girl who was adopted by the grandparents. "The thing we try hardest not to do is fill her with hate," said the child's grandfather. "But we loved our daughter. We are certain he killed her and sometimes the hate seeps out. Try as we might not to let it show, I know that sometimes it does."

Most parents in this situation spend unlimited hours and days and years seeking an answer to why their child died. Some people, after exploring, find a religious significance to the death and are comforted. Others, if they really wish to survive, find ultimately they must stop asking why their child was a victim of brutality.

Most people during this stage of powerlessness push themselves into their work. They work, come home and work until they can't work any longer and collapse into bed exhausted. They feel that they have to be occupied at all times.

When a child dies, the need in some of you to make some sort of statement, some refutation of your powerlessness, can be overwhelming. One couple, although divorced, are taking legal action to avenge their son's death. If they are successful it could help alleviate their rage. According to the lawsuit, their teenaged son developed influenza and was delirious. The mother claimed she contacted her family doctor who ordered the boy be taken to a hospital where he would meet the boy. The mother, according to a newspaper account, says the boy was in a semicomatose state and she was unable to dress him by herself and get him into her car. She called the police department of the suburban city in which she lived. A pair of patrolmen arrived and decided the boy was not ill but suffering from a drug overdose. They then strapped him to a stretcher and instead of taking him to the hospital where his physician was waiting, they took him to a drug facility, where he died. Although no amount of money can bring back their dead son, the parents are suing the police and the drug center. Whether or not they win their suit, it is only to be hoped that they will be able to work through some of their anguish. No matter what the settlement ~ if there is one ~ the sad basic premise will remain unchanged. Whether a court rules in their favor or not, their son will be dead. A cash settlement or an apology will be only a hollow victory when measured against the enormity of that truth.

Conversely, as terrible as it is to understand you may have no control over whether your child lives or dies, it is equally appalling to be given the choice.

According to an account in a newspaper, one family did not learn of their son's hydrocephalic condition until he was two months old, when his head began to swell. The child had been operated upon shortly after he was born to drain fluid from the brain area. The parents were told at the time of the recurrence their baby would never be more than an infant, never be able to comprehend anything. The parents say they are bitter, and had they been told the truth at the child's birth they would never have consented to the original surgery. When he was two months old they decided not to allow doctors to reoperate. The child lived seven months, and his parents needed urgent psychiatric treatment to help cope with their trauma. "It was the worst hell anyone can go through," said the mother. "It's something you need to discuss with someone. But in our society you can't discuss it because you're damned if you make this decision." The baby's father is angry at such organizations as The Right to Life groups and others who would prevent them from making what they felt was a necessary decision. "These groups come along and say, 'You've got no right to do this.' They don't know what they are dealing with. You learn from this kind of thing though," he said. "I wouldn't say that," interjected his wife. "You survive it." These people were in a unique situation where they did have the power to decide whether their child should live or die, but that is not generally the case.

Most of you are not in such positions. You are confronted with wars, illness, or accidents when you lose a child. Usually you are horrified because you have to bow to things beyond your control. Yet having decision taken from us is infinitely more simple.

Parents such as this young couple have my deepest sympathy. Their anguish must be boundless, their burden almost too great for anyone to carry. It is awful for bereaved parents to realize that nothing they can do or say can change the finality of their child's death. It becomes urgent, therefore, for such a mother or father to find something she or he can do ~ and, hopefully, do effectively.

The opposite of powerlessness, of course, is power. One of the basic things taken away from a bereaved parent is the conviction of possessing the ability to control, to have some say, in this world. Feeling that ability is gone, a parent must turn elsewhere to believe once again in himself and to redevelop a sense of self-esteem, a sense that he still is capable, and had the right to function and make decisions.

If there is even the slightest value in protest or litigation ~ avenues to which some bereaved parents turn ~ it probably lies with a parent once again believing he has some power. But parents taking this method of reestablishing themselves are in the minority. Most of you try other ways of regaining our sense of self. You try to fight back by rebuilding your lives.

Sometimes you find a more creative approach to your jobs or homemaking. Sometimes you throw yourselves into a new and challenging hobby. The proof of your own worth is very important after such a loss.

Some people experience an even greater exhilaration in achieving than that felt by those who have never lost a child. After such a soul-shattering nightmare, they are eager to create something, to bring something to life, to learn something new, to build something. It is probably all the more satisfying because it is such a long climb upward after fearing, when your child died, the highest you would ever reach again would be rock bottom!