So, I find I have a renewed interest in watching ER this year. It is the last year of the series and they are having old cast members do cameo roles. Sort of a walk down memory lane. This last Thursday there was an episode featuring Anthony Edwards [old cast mate] and Angela Bassett [new cast mate] about the loss of her son.
There was one scene where Bassett is talking, and she says [paraphrase]… When you lose your parents you’re called an Orphan. When you lose a spouse you’re called a Widow or a Widower. But there is no word when a parent loses a child.
It made me really stop and think. It was such a simple statement and yet so profound. There is no word for it. Maybe it is just so terrible that no one ever thought to make a word for it. Maybe the thought of it alone made linguists run screaming from the room, and so, no word exists. I wonder if it exists in other languages or cultures. I wonder.
There was another scene where the Bassett character is talking with her husband. She says [paraphrased again] that she tried to look at what she had left. That she loved him. That she knew there was a lot of life left to live… BUT, she could not let go of her child. Let go of the hope that she would hold him again one day. It was the way she delivered the lines. Her countenance was filled with the sadness of her loss. Her character seldom smiles. She is serious all the time. She lives with the death of her child and there is no word to describe what that is. I was amazed at how good the acting was, but more amazed that the writers knew how to write a scene like that. It was scary accurate.
I related to those scenes a lot. Not the sentiment, but the demeanor. I do not hang on to the hope that I will hold him again one day, although the most common memory I have is one where he runs up to me and jumps up into my arms. It’s not that I want to hold on. It’s not that I don’t want to live what is left of my reasonably good life. I do. But something happened that changed me the day he died. I became serious. Life became serious. Maybe life became too real for me. I don’t know.
It’s not hanging on to anything in particular — at least it isn’t for me. What it is, is, that I have been changed because of his death. Changed in ways that I can’t undo. Whatever direction my life would have taken had he lived, has been forever altered. Whatever I would have been had he lived has been altered as well. I cannot change that.
I am a parent that has lost her only child. And, I find it incredibly sad that there is no word to describe what I am now.
