At first I thought, How on earth could I relay what it felt like. I thought of words I could use, like horror, pain, and blackness. Severed, distraught, vile, and crippling. Cruel.

Then I remembered something a bereaved mom friend relayed at one of our Compassionate Friends meetings. She told us how she described to a non-bereaved-parent friend of hers what it felt like to lose a child:

She asked her friend,

Do you remember when 9/11 happened? Right after, you couldn’t stop thinking about it…there were no planes flying in the sky…it was surreal…everything was off. That’s sort of the feeling of how life is after your child dies. Like right after 9/11, of everything off, all the time.