Anticipating grief for a child

Terminal illness
1

My only child, my beautiful daughter is ill with incurable cervical cancer. She has a loving husband and two children of her own aged 2 and 6.

I help care for them. I don’t work any more. I do all I can to make her available time as good as it can be.
As she becomes weaker I am panicking about how to cope. How to help the grandchildren and her husband let alone my own grief.

She has bravely told her story and late diagnosis with students for awareness week. She is so brave.
But I can’t sleep get exhausted and can’t stop crying.

2

hi CarriesMum
so sorry the situation you are in and the suffering of your beautiful daughter,its an horrible place to be seeing someone you love get so weak and there are no words I or anyone could say to ease the pain your going through or the devastation you face when the worst happens.i just hope and pray you can help your grand children and your daughters partners as best you can,and of course get help your self in what will be very testing stress full times to come.you sound like your giving your daughter all the help you can muster to make things as easy as they can be for her.sorry im of no real help ,just want you know sadly your not on your own ,we on this forum know what pains and hurt you are going through and how hard it is to live with such tragedy in their lives.hope you and your daughters husband can try as best you can to try stay strong for the little ones and give them all the love and comfort they will need .
regards ian

3

I am so sorry that your daughter is so ill, it must be awful for you. Have you heard of the short book “Waterbugs and Dragonflies” ? It was written for children and it explains about death, I am sorry to be so blunt, this book is available on Amazon UK. It is a beautiful book, in fact our son who is 52 read an extract at his dad’s funeral (my husband) last September. I can’t say anything more to you, I am sure that these lovely people here will express all there is to be said. x

4

Hi @CarriesMum, I’m so sorry to hear that your daughter is so ill. It is understandable that you are devastated. It sounds as though you are doing everything you can to support her and her family.

We have some information pages on the Sue Ryder website that you might find helpful:

And here are some further resources from other organisations which might help:

It’s important to have support for yourself, too, so please do keep posting here if you find that it helps. There are many grieving parents using this site who will understand some of what you are going through

5

Thank you for your kind words
We have recently had some very small improvements and my heart is eased for a little while. It will be a roller coaster ride I know. But I am learning to appreciate all the small moments .