Dear Nick,
I can feel your grief, and it is right and true that you and your partner should feel grief in the loss of your son.
Each of us has our own experience of life and our own unique understanding, or lack of understanding of death. I can only share my own experiences, and hopefully you and others may find some bit of light and hope in them.
The closest person to me that has passed on is my grandfather. He really meant a lot to everyone in the family and he lived an active life of service to his community of family and friends. He died as he lived - at the end of a day of yard work and also providencially a long and deep conversaiion with his wife of over sixty years. He lay down to sleep and the walking pneumonia that he evidently had, filled his lungs with fluid and stopped his heart.
Initially, I was saddened to hear the news of my grandfather's death, and the family was quite shaken as would be expected. However, just after his death, I did begin to experience a sense of extreme closeness to him - and with this a sense of joy began to fill my heart. As he was no longer, as in life, in a particular location, it felt as if his essence, wisdom, love, and brilliance had come to rest in my heart. I felt a certain sense of guilt in the face of my families grief. Here they felt a sense of loss and I felt like I had been given the most precious gift. I felt closer to him than even when I had sat on his lap as a child held in his warm, jolly and loving embrace. I wanted to tell them - "look in your heart, he is there", but I was hesistant to share my inner experience.
In the end I offered to do the eulogy at the service and I did put the basic idea into the speech, without the mystical description. The essence of it was that we are left after the death of a person whom we love with all of the good experiences and memories of the person, with all of the lessons that we learned as a result of our loving them. To give their life the most meaning, we must take all that was real of thier life - their spirit and consciousness - to heart. This I believe is the true meaning of "taking something to heart".
I hope that this has been helpful in some way to you in your time of sorrow. I too have children and the idea of the loss of ones child has got to be the worst possible scenario in any parents life. However brief a childs time with a parent, the effect of the quality of their life upon the world is incalculable. The have made a difference. Every life matters a great deal. The world is a better place for their having lived in it.
in sympathy,
Blake
