Inevitably there were people who wrote that they understood our pain because, though they hadn’t lost a child or they didn’t have children, they had lost a parent or a beloved pet. Kindhearted and well-intentioned people: don’t make those comparisons. These messages are not compassionate; they are clueless, even egotistic. It’s all right not to understand the situation—neither do the parents! And it’s more than all right to acknowledge that you cannot find the right words—I, a professional who has worked with words for twenty years, can’t either. It’s not quite all right when you make yourself
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