This happens to other people, it can’t be happening to me!

In the natural scheme of life, parents are not supposed to outlive their children. When a child dies, the pain and suffering that a parent endures is devastating beyond words. It is the worst tragedy a parent can ever face and nothing can compare to the raw pain and heartache that eats away at your very being. As much as others try to comprehend what the parents are going through, unless they themselves have ever lost a child, they cannot understand the reality of that loss. Grief leaves a hole in the heart, a feeling like someone has ripped a piece of it from inside the chest, never to be whole again.

Everyone believes that time heals and you move on with your life and you accept your fate, but I can honestly say that pain never goes away. We do move on, but so does the pain that we carry every day for the rest of our lives. We don’t delete it from our system, we learn coping skills and how to deal with it a little better. Eventually the good days outnumber the tough days, but they will come and go as they see fit.

This is the story of my grief journey that started in a very black and deep hole, with no hope in sight after the death of one of my twin sons, Ryan, at the age of 14, just 10 days before their 15th birthday.

Jacqueline (Jackie) resides in Silver Lake/Madison, New Hampshire where she leads The Compassionate Friends of Mt. Washington Valley, a local chapter of the national TCF organization, a support group for parents, grandparents and siblings supporting the death of a child. Helping others to understand and find hope is her goal and it is what makes her pain more bearable.