Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Bury one or all of my children.
Straight up: I have had too many friends who have had children die.
I brought this up to my Mom two days ago when I found out that a clients daughter started chemo. She is four.
Is it that the world is smaller, or is it that children are getting sicker at a younger age? I don't remember knowing kids who were critically ill when I was a kid. Thinking that it was just THAT I WAS A KID, I asked my Mom. She didn't know kids that were critically ill when I was a kid either. She only knew one as a kid, and he had a genetic condition. I remember one kid, Robbie, also a genetic condition and he lived to be 20 something.
Now it seems like it's all around me-all the time.
And then there is the ones you don't see coming... Abby and Alexis. Friend's children.
Katie and Megan, girls I went to school with who were killed on highways.
And lastly, there are the children who are killing themselves. Brianne. And about 10 kids from Eston a year.
I think children create a space inside of you (and not just literally). When I was younger I knew I wanted to have babies. I think of them like tea cups between my chakras. You don't know a cup is there until that baby is coming. Having that baby fills your cup. You are meant to be buried (in my case-lit on fire) with those spaces full. I think a miscarriage can make that baby's cup empty, losing a baby can make that space empty, losing a 5 year old can leave that space empty... a teenager... a grown-child.
Regardless of number of children... each child has it's own cup. Empty cups remain empty.
I would like to say that burying children is unnatural, but I don't think I really can because death is as natural as birth, it's the sequence that is off.
I think 'unexpected' is maybe a better term.
We expect to bury our parents.
We expect to maybe have to bury a spouse
... but we expect our children to plant us.