What does one say to a parent whose child has suddenly died?
A whole future vanished. A heart mutilated. A family severed.
I’m terribly sorry to hear of your loss and I want you to know I’m with you. Love, _?
Many years ago, in a small town in the United States of America lived Rachel. She was twelve. One ill-fated day she went off to play tennis with her friend. Both these young lives, on their way home were mercilessly thwarted.
Here’s the letter Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher wrote to Rachel’s parents as only he can.
Dear Steve and Anita,
Rachel finished her brief work on earth and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts. As the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently, is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teachings as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and spacious peace from the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation. I cannot assuage your pain with any words, nor should I, for your pain is Rachel’s legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice but there it is and it must burn its purifying way to completion.
You may emerge from this ordeal more dead than alive and then you will understand why the greatest Saints for whom every human being is their child shoulder the unbearable pain of it all and are sometimes referred to as the living dead. Something within you dies when you bear the unbearable and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves.
Now is the time to let you find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel and thank her for being with you these few years and encourage her to go on with her work knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart I know that you and she will meet again and again and I recognise the many ways in which you have known each other and when you meet you will in a flash know, but now it is not given to you to know why this had to be the way it was.
Your rational minds can never understand what has happened but if you can keep your heart open, it will find its own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth which included her manner of death. Now her soul is freer and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space. In that deep love include me too.
Ram Dass.
“Death is not an enemy. Things die. It’s only an enemy of who you think you are. You can work for healing, which is the end of suffering, which is fundamentally created by an attachment to the illusion of your own separateness.
Can you do everything you can within whatever your incarnation is to keep it beautiful, make it more compassionate, more loving, more harmonious, more conscious and at the same moment not be attached to the outcome?”
: Ram Dass
Source: Using a relationship to awaken.