Your children/child

How are your children handling the loss of their parent?

I have a daughter-she was 24 when my wife, her mother died, 18 months ago. She is our only child. I sometimes worry how she is processing her mother’s death. She and her mom had a “bond” I cannot replicate. I am a believer in the maternal bond, a woman carries a child in her womb for an average of 9 months and the attachment is so strong, the relationship is unique between a mother and daughter.

I was going though albums last night, hundreds of photos my wife took. A lifetime of memories. I found report cards, vacation memories, awards, achievements from second grade.

I want to take some old photos of when my daughter danced ballet, competed in gymnastics and karate, and then take a photograph of her when she graduates this May. I want to put a silhouette of her mother looking at her in the background of each photo, and in the last, with her graduating from college, looking down on Erin with a bright light next to her. I will frame them and give them to my daughter as a gift.

I thought I could somehow walk away and move on with life after the death of my wife. I am learning that after being with someone for 35 years; it does not work that way. No matter what I do, how I go forward, my deceased wife will be with me and the grieving process will never completely go away.

I can live with that. I have no choice.

Thanks