A very dear writer friend sent me a piece he had written as the final part to essays he wrote about the loss of his child, a child who had many physical and mental problems from birth, yet who led a fulfilling life and brought his parents and siblings endless joy.

It has been three months now since the lights went out of my son's beautiful brown eyes. For the most part, the agonizing pain is behind me - in its place is a persistent emptiness that can only be filled by staying busy or by immersing myself in family affairs. At times like right now, alone and working at the computer, the emptiness is displaced by vivid memories of him, his sweet disposition and his ever-present and luminous smile. Rather than being comforted by the memories, I ache from them. Inexorably, they lead me straight to that awful moment when I realized that he was slipping away from me, that I was powerless to prevent it and that I would never be able to hold him and cuddle him again.

I don't remember this level of grief over the deaths of my dad, mom, and two older brothers. Those deaths were hard, but the memories are mostly happy ones. Thoughts of my dad, for example, rarely lead me to my angry 3-mile run from the hospital to my home after being told by the doctor he had died before we got there. Instead, I think of the times we played catch, or seeing him smiling and cheering on the sidelines during a ball game - and those thoughts metamorphose into a warm, sentimental feeling. I have thought about this a lot over the past months and the conclusions I have reached aren't personally comforting, but may be instructive for others who lose a child - particularly a special child, or anticipate the birth of a special child.

I am extremely bitter about the hardships that my son had to face in his life. Don't get me wrong, however. I have often been asked if we would have had Billy if we had known how severe his problems were going to be. The answer is still an emphatic YES. Despite the hardships, I believe that he had a good quality of life - at least as he knew it. He was unaware (As far as we know) that he was missing out on any thing. Hugs, smiles, music, television - those kept him happy. Sports, bikes, high school proms - those had no meaning for him and were, therefore, not missed. We, the parents, are the ones who missed out, and are bitter. We are bitter because he was ill so often and suffered so much more than most. He didn't know the difference. He didn't know that he shouldn't smile and be happy with a tube rammed down his throat. We knew because we stood so many nights by his hospital bed and witnessed his struggles while most children, including his brothers, could not imagine being so desperately ill.

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