As a client told me, if God had told him 21 years ago he'd give him Joshua, so much happiness and pleasure, and then take him away in 21 years, he would still "take deal."

I'm humbled by this client who now must measure depth of pleasure with depth of his sorrow. Crises give meaning to pat phrases we’ve read. When I got phone call my son was in ICU and not expected to live, Churchill’s words came to me, "This will be our finest hour." I knew I might be called upon to endure every Mother’s nightmare, and if he died, and I survived it, and thrived again, it would require my soul’s resources.

It’s terrifying to keep loving with all your heart and soul in face of loss, and it is also antidote. The greater loss, thing to fear more, would be not to fully love when we could’ve.

We learn to forgive, by forgiving. We learn to love, by loving. We learn compassion, by being compassionate. And we learn to survive loss, by surviving loss. There's no other way.

We often turn to poetry at major transitions in our life – when we fall in love, or out of love, or lose our love. Poetry seems best vehicle, with it’s eloquence, it’s containment, it’s ability to distill. The way death of your child or face of your beloved make you feel is beyond words, and so, in a paradoxical way, is poetry.

When my son died some years ago, at age of 21,I started writing poetry, as I have at every turning point in my life. The words of Alfred Lord Tennyson reverberated in my mind:

But for unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcoties numbing pain.

Tennyson’s poem, “In Memoriam,” ends with famous lines: ’T is better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all,” which is what every parent struggling with loss of a child must eventually reconcile.

Art, music and poetry are some of ways we feel, learn about feeling, and express feelings. Indulge!