Stories
Loss of a child
For parents carrying the weight of a child they have loved and lost, at any age.
Funny socks
MarieAugust 2026
My son Charl died five years ago. He was 19 years old. For a long time I hated the question, "How many children do you have?" It sounds like such a simple question until one of your children has died. I have three children. I will always have three children. But answering that way sometimes leads to another question, and then I have to decide whether I'm going to tell a stranger in the dentist's waiting room that my eldest son is dead. In the beginning I avoided the question altogether. Now I usually say I have three. Charl loved ridiculous socks. The brighter and uglier, the better. One Christmas after he died, his younger brother bought everyone a pair and said we should wear them for Charl.It wasn't planned as some meaningful family tradition. It was actually very funny because my husband absolutely hated his. But we've done it every Christmas since. Five years later, there are moments when our family feels happy again. I used to feel guilty about those moments. But I've learned that we need to find some joy, that's what Charl would have wanted.Every Christmas our family wears ridiculous socks for Charl.How I honour them
MeganJune 2026
We lost our son Daniel three years ago, when he was seven. The first year I don't really remember. People say that and I used to think it was an exaggeration. But it really isn’t. I functioned, I made lunches for his sister, I went to work. But if you asked me what happened in those months I couldn't tell you. It felt like grief took the colour out of everything. What helped wasn't one big thing. It was small, almost embarrassingly small. A lovely woman from a bereavement group told me to stop trying to "get through" the day and just get through the next hour. So that's what I did. One hour. Then the next. Living life in increments. The other thing that helped was being allowed to still be his mother. It felt like people expected me to pack it all away, like his room and his things. But I needed to keep mothering him somehow. So we started lighting a candle for him at dinner on Tuesdays, because Tuesday was the day he was born. His sister chooses the candle now. We say one thing we remember about him. And sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, sometimes we don’t say anything. But it’s our way of keeping him close. There's no version of this where it's healed for me. But I can breathe now, and three years ago I couldn't, and I want anyone reading this in their own first unbearable year to know that the breathing does come back. It doesn’t feel the same, I don’t feel the same. But I keep on for myself, my husband, my daughter and for Daniel.We light a candle, that my daughter chooses, every Tuesday.How I honour them
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