Too young to die : parents suffering the loss of a child struggle to endure

Carol Kelley thinks about the moment her watch stopped two years ago, while she was at a meeting in New York City. It was the same moment her 17-year-old son, Shane, was killed in a car

accident in Northern California. “I just think it must have been his day, you know, that it was his fate,” said Kelley, a Moorpark resident. Laura Burchfield and her husband, Dan, think

about a poem their 11-year-old son Joel wrote a few weeks before he was swept away and drowned in a rain-swollen stream near their Moorpark home. In his poem, Joel imagined a place with no

pollution, with mountains and clear running streams where he could hike and fish and “run forever.” He ends the short verse by saying “I see all those beautiful things.” “Maybe that’s where

he is now,” said Laura Burchfield, still reeling from Joel’s death almost five months ago. “At least that’s what I hope. It’s what I have to believe to survive this.” Perhaps there is no

greater loss than the loss of a child. For these mothers, and other parents across Ventura County whose children have died by accident, disease or violence, it is a loss that many thought

they would not be able to endure. “When it happens, you ask yourself how you will ever survive,” Burchfield said. “I didn’t think I could do it.” But somehow they do. The Burchfields did.

Kelley did. So did Martha Hernandez of Oxnard and her husband, Aurelio Jauregui, whose 7-year-old daughter, Evita, died of leukemia three years ago. “It’s impossible to understand, but you

go on,” Hernandez said. “You do what you have to do to survive.” Some endure even more suffering. The loss can damage the psyche or ruin a marriage. Burchfield said her 8-year-old son, Ryan,

her husband, her friends, Joel’s friends and her family saved her. “If I didn’t have that I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” she said. “I’d be locked up somewhere, crazy, or I would

have done something terrible.” Therapists who specialize in counseling grieving parents say Burchfield’s reactions are normal. Parents struggle to make sense of something that is out of the

“natural order of things,” as Carol Kelley says. “You just have this expectation that you will die before your child dies,” she said. “But it’s even more than that, because let’s face it,

your child really is a part of you, and when they’re gone that’s a piece of you dying.” * There is a growing network of therapists and support groups across Ventura County who specialize in

bereavement counseling. The Compassionate Friends support group, launched in the county more than a decade ago, is probably the most consistently cited by parents for helping them cope with

their losses. Started in the early 1970s by a couple in England, it has grown to include more than 660 groups across the United States. The groups, made up of parents who have lost children,

are meant to be a place where “parents feel safe talking about their loss,” said Roberta Smith, who lost her 34-year-old son 12 years ago and runs the Ventura-Oxnard support group. It meets

the last Monday of each month, and the Simi Valley chapter meets the first Monday of the month. In addition, there are free one-on-one counseling sessions provided by the Camarillo Hospice,

paid for through a mix of private and local government funds. The Camarillo Hospice is also trying to set up a support group for parents whose children have died. When parents go in to see

a counselor, one of the first things they are told is that although the intense pain associated with the loss eventually subsides, the grieving for a lost child never goes away. “It’s just

the beginning, really,” said Hugh Oliveto, who lost his 3-month-old son eight years ago and now helps organize the Simi Valley chapter of Compassionate Friends. “It’s like losing an arm or a

hand,” he said. “You go on but you can never forget it. There’s always something there to remind you.” * But being reminded about the loss is not necessarily a bad thing, Oliveto said. It’s

forgetting that scares grieving parents. Some go to great lengths to honor the memory of their children. Oliveto knows of parents who, years after their child’s death, still get up every

morning and go to the graveside, leaving pictures and mementos. Carol Kelley felt compelled to “walk where Shane would have walked” and attended what would have been her son’s prom and

graduation night celebration. Right after the accident, Kelley went to see the spot near Mount Shasta where her son Shane Umberger died. Now she is trying to publish some of her son’s poems

and has entered one in a contest. Laura Burchfield said she still can’t go near where her son drowned, but she also feels a need to memorialize Joel. Inspired by a suggestion from their

younger son, Ryan, Burchfield and her husband had an “angel window” built. The stained-glass window depicts an angel wearing a Little League baseball uniform. Ryan said it would allow his

brother’s spirit to come in and out of the house. And for the three years since their daughter died, Martha Hernandez and her husband haven’t changed a thing in Evita’s room. It is still

crammed with the dozens of stuffed animals, all of which she had carefully named and given birth dates to. The couple also keep a huge collage of pictures of their daughter and say they have

a need to make sure people know “that she existed, that she lived.” The family runs the Ventura restaurant Evita’s, named after their daughter four years before they even knew she was ill.

“I think it’s important for parents to keep their children’s memory alive,” said Carol Wadsworth, a bereavement counselor for the Camarillo Hospice at Pleasant Valley Hospital. “We have a

culture that removes us from death,” Wadsworth said. “We try to shut it out. What we find is that everybody deals with it differently, and we need to tell them that whatever they need to do

to handle the loss is OK. And that’s not what many of them are hearing from friends and family.” * Parents who have lost children say that those who have not experienced the same kind of

loss have a difficult time understanding what they are going through. Friends and even family members have expectations that there is a timetable for grieving, Wadsworth said. Six months, a

year perhaps, but after that many friends and family members have little patience with stories of a dead child, she said. There is a long list of some of the inappropriate things said to

parents who have lost a child, phrases such as “I understand how you feel” or “You can have other children” or “He’s in a better place.” “Don’t tell me ‘he’s in a better place,’ ” Burchfield

said. “Joel’s place was with his family. He was happy with us. He was loved. We gave him a good home, so don’t tell me he’s in a better place.” Many parents, who turn to such grief

counselors as Wadsworth to help guide them through the early fog of emotions after the loss, find solace talking about their dead children among groups of parents who have lost a child. And

most parents go one step further, Wadsworth said, they start to ask themselves the bigger questions: about why their child died, about whether there is a God or an afterlife, about what kind

of meaning their child’s short life had. “Again, people react differently,” she said. “It can shake your faith in God, if you believe. And it pulls away the veil that makes us believe that

if we are good, lock our doors, and wear seat belts that nothing bad is going to happen to us. The world is not like that. It can be a harsh, unpredictable place.” For Hugh Oliveto, a lapsed

Catholic, his son’s death from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was a confirmation of the randomness and unfairness of life. “I just have to conclude that there is no one looking out for us,

that we’re on our own,” Oliveto said. * But many parents find solace in religion and believe that their child’s soul did not die with the body, Wadsworth said. Between 90% and 95% of parents

who have lost a child say they have felt their child’s presence after the death, Wadsworth said. Hernandez and Jauregui have rediscovered their faith. “I was born a Catholic, but never

really went to church,” Jauregui said. “Now I’m more caught up in my religion. . . . I want to know what happens when you die.” * Books That May Help There are hundreds of books for coping

with the loss of a child. Three have been consistently mentioned by parents and therapists as being helpful: “The Worst Loss,” Barbara Rosof. “How to Survive the Loss of a Child,” by

Catherine Sanders. “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” by Harold Kushner. Support Groups There are support groups for grieving parents as well as several institutions that specialize in

bereavement counseling. To reach Compassionate Friends in Simi Valley, contact Hugh Oliveto at 526-7826. To reach Compassionate Friends in Oxnard and Ventura, contact Roberta Smith at

647-6156. Several local hospitals and hospice centers provide bereavement counseling. The Camarillo Hospice provides free one-on-one counseling for parents who have lost children. For more

information, call the Camarillo Hospice at 389-5898. MORE TO READ