When I had to bury my child, I probably didn't start grieving until a year and a half later.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I didn't start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16.
During my grief, I realised there was nothing I could do for my mother, but I did have a child.
You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.
Even with my father and brother dying, I didn't quite process the grief.
The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on.
I didn't realize I was still grieving for my father at 30-something.
I have an eight-year-old child, and I literally can't wrap my mind around the kind of grief that must be felt when you lose a child.
As a parent, it's my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary and to realize that life is still profoundly beautiful and worth living despite the fact that we inevitably lose one another and that life ends, and we don't know what happens after death.
My dad was diagnosed with cancer, so we ended up burying him a year to the day that he was diagnosed.
Such is my experience - not that I ever mourned the loss of a child, but that I consider myself as lost!