We Are Extraordinary Parents

I’ve always found it strange that there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. Why do widows, widowers, and orphans get to have all the fun? I think it’s time for someone to right this wrong.

Bear with me for a moment as I reaffirm what you already know: children aren’t supposed to die before their parents. That’s just not the way life should work. We give birth to children or adopt them, we love and nurture them, we raise them, they grow up, we grow old, and then we die. The circle of life, sunrise, sunset, rinse and repeat, choose your own metaphor. That’s what every parent expects, and by and large it’s also the way things play out.

Losing a child—no matter the circumstances—goes against the natural order of things. It’s not part of the ordinary experience. It is something entirely different, and we become something entirely different.

When your child is taken from you, you are no longer ordinary parents. Ordinary parents don’t visit their child in a cemetery. Ordinary parents don’t cry themselves to sleep at night. Ordinary parents don’t wake up each morning knowing they’ll never see their child again.

We become extra ordinary.

We become the ones who are unlike the others. We become the newest members of the world’s cruelest club, one that is already overcrowded and where the cost to join is the steepest price imaginable.

We become “those people,” the tragic ones who are whispered about and pitied. We become the ones who are shattered, seemingly beyond repair. Remember Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People? That.

But after a while, something strange takes place that’s right out of a Marvel comic book. A metamorphosis occurs during our grief and mourning, transforming us from extra ordinary to extraordinary. A lot happens when you close up the space between those two words.

We are extraordinary parents. Not in the sense that we are exceptionally good, which is what people usually mean when they use that adjective. But look it up and you’ll find we are the very definition of the word:

a. Going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary 

b. Exceptional to a very marked extent

We are extraordinary parents who must go on living in the world with a hole in our heart. We are extraordinary parents who, in many cases, still love and care for our other children. We are extraordinary parents who go to work every day and function as human beings, while most people are unaware of our secret identities. We are extraordinary parents who feel things that no ordinary parent has ever felt, and we can endure the deepest pain because that has become one of our superpowers.

And that’s another notable thing about us: we all have different superpowers because each of us experiences our loss in our own particular way. Some of us have an unlimited capacity for compassion and forgiveness. Some of us become impervious to pain. Some of us are masters of disguise. Some of us can turn to stone. Some of us can become invisible. And then there are those of us who can open up and share it with the world.

We walk among you. We are your friends and neighbors, your co-workers, the quiet couple who sat at the table next to you in a restaurant last night. We are the extraordinary parents. And we don’t mind if you want to call us by our first name.

Larry Carlat is the author of A Space in the Heart: A Survival Guide for Grieving Parents.