Helping My Sons Grieve

By: Robyn Busekrus

I wish loss wasn’t a part of our journey. 

When we found out we were expecting, we had this vision of what our family would look like.  It had been some years since having our boys, and we always had wanted another child. One of the hardest parts of this journey is seeing how it has affected our sons. We have been very open with them through the experience and that has helped them process the pain, but it doesn’t take the pain away.  

There are times when we will be outside at night and the boys will say “there is Hope’s star.”  For some reason personal to them, they have found comfort in seeing a star shining bright in the sky.  At other times, we will be playing or doing an activity with our family and I will say “I love you, boys.”

My youngest son always says, “and the boy who is in your heart.” He also does a little heart pat and points to the sky to remember Hope.

With kids and grief, it is difficult to know the right words to say.  I didn’t want to scare our boys when talking about loss. When we lost our expected son our world, like many others on this journey, fell apart.  The dreams were gone and the happiness disappeared.

As a family, we had to reinvent or reconstruct a new path.  

Some things that have helped our children through sibling loss include: talking about our son, imagining what we picture we would be doing now with him, and looking for ways to honor him. This summer our boys are attending a book camp and one of the activities was making kindness rocks. As I was looking through their rocks, I noticed some were a variety of colors and some had simple words such as hope.  We went throughout our town and put them in different community places including a park and our Little Free Library. We decided to put one in the garden area of our local Angel of Hope statue. Maybe someone visiting there will see the rock with Hope on it and it will bring some peace or comfort in this quiet, serene place of reflection.

With our boys, I wish we didn’t have to talk about loss nor experience it.  However, I am grateful the boys look for the signs that bring them comfort and that we can try to bring hope to others through simple acts of kindness. 

“Bring love wherever you go. Shine light wherever it’s dark. Leave blessings wherever you’ve been. Be kind wherever you are” -Mary Davis