I drove home that day, Monday 19 February, full of misery
and anger, but I think that the horror of that entire
experience either anaesthetised me for the demands of the
funeral, or else it made everything that followed less
overwhelming. That evening we had to return, as a family, to
the funeral room attached to the hospital. For a time I grew
to hate that hospital because of the bad memories it held for
me. Our small family tried to console each other and pray
together as we stood beside the coffin, before the public
arrived to offer their sympathy.
I sensed the fear and the pain of my family as we entered
the funeral room, which was beside the morgue. Having
experienced the coldness and bareness of the morgue there
was some comfort for me that the funeral room, while sparse,
was at least warm. For some of my family it was different.
They had not yet seen Cathal after the post-mortem, and were
unprepared for the trauma of seeing him laid out in a coffin.
Extract from When a Child Dies. Footsteps of a Grieving Family. Published by Veritas.
Tags: bereavement, death of a child, grief