When you have a child, you want to watch them evolve into an individual. Watch how they handle their lives. Enjoy their successes and comfort them in their pain, until such time as you leave the world. You don’t, under any circumstance, want to lose them to an untimely death. As is said, a parent should never bury their child. However children do die, whether it is suddenly or by a long drawn out illness. This is a parent’s worst nightmare.

I have three children and as a parent I want to protect them always. But in reality you can’t, no matter how hard you might try. Eventually you have to set them free to experience the world, let them make their own decisions and keep in mind that life has many pitfalls and dangers.

I couldn’t imagine losing any of them to death. I don’t know how or if I even could handle it. How would this lose affect the rest of the family? Could the family even survive? Everything certainly will have changed forever. Boy would I want my Cabin in the Woods, but I don’t think that would even help.

I remember once when I was still selling insurance I had a parent sitting in front of me looking for a quote on auto insurance for their 17 year old who was going to take their road test. That night the 17 year old got in a car with their unlicensed and inexperienced friend behind the wheel. While traveling down a highway, a tire blew out and the car rolled over, ejecting and killing them. So one day the parent is looking into the cost of getting car insurance and the next day their planning a funeral. How on earth does a parent handle this? One bad decision by the child and their life ends and the surviving family’s life becomes unbearable. Why should this happen? I’m sure that parent wanted only the best for their child, but allowed, as any good parent should, the child to grow up and make their own decisions. Unfortunately children will make bad decisions and this one didn’t get to learn from theirs and thus paid the ultimate price.