What you are saying in prolonged grief is: “My world has ended.” That is the message parents are sending if they go on and on with their grief. The surviving child wonders, “Don’t I mean anything to you?” Many times parents tend to idealize the dead child, and for that reason siblings often feel the child who died was the favorite.
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Judith says that in surviving, you can’t do everything as you once did. “Everyone has a thing they can’t do—like going to the cemetery, or back to a favorite spot of your child’s, or to a supermarket where your child may have shopped with you, or to any place that stirs painful memories. Although you will go forward in many areas, there are also many areas in which you cannot go back.”
