After My 4-Year-Old Died, I Couldn’t Believe Someone Asked Me This Question

Three months after my 4-year-old son died, I finally mustered the courage to leave my house and attend a social event. After Jake’s death, I was in a permanent fog and couldn’t be trusted to not break down in tears or lose control at any given moment. But I knew that we would eventually have to face our community, and attending this event, which had a mission to help kids with medical challenges like the ones my son faced, felt like the right thing to do.

The minute we walked in the door, I immediately regretted the decision. I could feel the judgment around the room, the whispers of “they’re here; I can’t believe they are out so soon after their son died.” I’d anticipated that people might recede to the corners, not knowing what to say to us. But instead, we were the center of attention. There were many faces I recognized, but more that I didn’t. It made me think that this is what celebs feel like when the paparazzi surrounds them. But I was famous for my kid dying, not for singing or starring in a movie. I tried to be gracious and greet everyone, but my husband was whisked in a different direction, and I was left alone like a deer in headlights. I was incapable of formulating answers to the many questions being asked and felt short of breath. Then I heard a question that made me want to drop to the floor.

“Are you going to have another kid?”

I’d heard a lot of hurtful things in the time since Jake died. I couldn’t avoid it; we live in a relatively small town where I run into folks at the grocery store, in the school pickup line and on all my daily errands. But nothing stung like that question.

Even 14 years later, the memory of it being asked still stings. There were so many other questions people asked that were helpful, questions that gave me an opportunity to talk about Jake and share some memories. Why ask about another child?

Each time the question was asked, it stung. But never as much as the first time. It felt so insanely personal, and it made me feel like people were just skipping over and dismissing Jake’s existence. They were focusing entirely on life after him and forgetting about the life we had with him.

It also didn’t address my enormous loss. Instead, it felt like an attempt to make the situation less awkward for everyone else. And while I know that it wasn’t meant to be hurtful, it felt loaded. Because even if the answer was “yes,” how would that change anything? Jake would still be dead. It felt like people wanted me to have a replacement child.

To be honest, I don’t think those who asked this question were thinking about me or my family-building plans. I think it was a way for them to feel better, less scared, less uncomfortable. I felt like our loss made everyone around us in our community nervous – if we could lose a child, then they could as well. And even though Jake had many medical conditions, we were not prepared for or expecting his death. It felt like we were not only living our own worst nightmare, but we were carrying the weight of everyone else’s fear. It felt like people were trying to strip us of all we had left – our memories, our stories, and yes, even our pain.

It may seem strange to want to hang on to the pain, but for a while after Jake’s death, it was the one thing that reminded me that I was still alive and not just permanently numb. Facing and feeling the pain was and is an integral part of my grieving process, and it was also the only way I could feel close to Jake in the aftermath of his death. It was all I had. All that love that a mother feels for her child got channeled into pain, and for a long time I clung to it. It was like my drug; I needed to have it to feel again. I see how that could be uncomfortable for those around me, but it wasn’t something I wanted taken away.

I get that for some parents who have lost a child, maybe having another child is what they need. Maybe they were planning on it before their loss, or it’s their way to rebuild their family. There’s no judgment in that. But for me, when others asked about another child, that meant they were looking for a reason to NOT talk about Jake.

To be fair, nobody, including those of us who have been through it, always knows the “right” words to say when someone has suffered a loss, particularly a big loss. It’s so personal, right? What hurts me doesn’t necessarily hurt another person with the same loss.

The good news is we’ve come a long way with talking about grief in the years since my son’s death. There are books, shows, movies and podcasts (like mine, “A Place of Yes”), and I love that we’ve begun to normalize grief and help people learn how to talk about it. Maybe one of the prices we pay for talking about it more is that we risk getting it wrong more. And that’s OK because it is hard to know what to say when someone loses a child. I’ve learned that some of the most helpful things we can do are to just let people talk, say their loved one’s name or share their memories of their person.

If you still aren’t sure what to say, stick with something simple. Let people know you care, even if that’s just saying, “I am with you,” or “This sucks,” or dropping off a coffee on their porch.

Whatever you do, please don’t ask if they’re having another child. However they answer, I can tell you that that question is never OK.

Heather Straughter is the host of “A Place of Yes” podcast and the president of Jake’s Help From Heaven, a nonprofit serving families of children with complex medical needs. She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with her husband, Brian, and their son, Ethan, who attends Syracuse University.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

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