God is most often described in the positive. By this, I mean positive attributes. For example, people describe God as joyful, loving, all-knowing, ever-present, creative, and merciful. These are positive attributes of God.

Some religious traditions, however, prefer to understand God in the negative. Not as in God being negative, but in accepting that there are many things we don’t know about God and will never know. For example, in the negative, we might say God is unknowable, indescribable, and beyond logic and comprehension. Negative theology accepts that God is beyond what we can put into words and that anything we can say about God ultimately falls far short of His significance.

I think both a positive and negative theological understanding of God is important. But that’s not my focus here today.

Grief, like God, is something I have tried to describe in the positive. I attempt, in very human fashion, to give words to my experience of pain and loss. I use terms like despair, sorrow, shattered, etc. 

I am beginning to think, though, that the best description of grief is to understand it in the negative.

So often, when I encounter parents who learn that we have lost a child, their first words to us are usually something along the lines of, “I’m so sorry for your loss. I cannot even imagine.”

I usually say to them, with love, “No, you cannot imagine it, and you do not want to.” This language, “I cannot even imagine,” is an expression of grief in the negative.

Losing a child is the experience of pain and loss that is incomprehensible to those who have not been through it.

I want to explore this idea through a few examples.

Long ago, I read an intriguing article about intelligence agency black ops sites. I don’t remember all the details, but the concept was that these sites were showing up on heat maps as negations, as empty spaces. All around a particular geographic area, there was heat activity, except in certain places. The negation—what was not there—revealed more about what was there than the positive attributes of heat and light. The absence (black on a heat map) told a bigger story than the presence of activity.

In philosophy, there’s a branch called “phenomenology.” It’s one of my favorite branches because it goes deep. Simplifying a bit, phenomenology attempts to study what’s not there, what’s not seen. I remember a particular homework assignment where I described an orphanage entirely by what was not seen or observed.

Let’s say I’m at work and a friend, a coworker, shows up. Normally, I notice what’s there. This is normal, right? A smile, a friendly exchange of pleasantries, their dress, mannerisms, behavior. I see things, I notice.

Phenomenology asks, what is behind what we see, what’s not there? Interestingly enough, as I write this, I think of Cooper. Perhaps I should have more frequently considered what I wasn’t seeing. What were the possibilities?

Over the last several months, I have been regularly attending a The Compassionate Friends support group for grieving parents. I find incredible value in this group.

Why?

The main reason I find value in our group, I think, is because I am instantly and automatically bonded with those who have experienced the negation, the empty space, the loss of a child. These parents can look beyond how I show up at meetings and see the negative spaces in my life and spirit. Not only do they see my empty places, they understand them.

I know, they know. They know, I know.

At our last The Compassionate Friends meeting, a friend, a grieving mother, said through tears, “I miss the future.” Her words struck me to the heart. I understood.

In losing our son, Cooper, we miss out on his future. We won’t see the goals he would have achieved, the relationships he would have had, the possibility of a wedding, of grandchildren, his future laughter, holidays together, time at the oak table breaking bread, craft beers together at the pub, nights on the couch watching sports, and so much more.

I miss the future, too.

Notice, our pain is shared around negation—what will not be there in the future.

During this same meeting, a father, another friend, shared his thoughts about the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

I’m not sure I understood his thoughts entirely, but I took something from his sharing.

As a father, I am moving through life with my children. As they grow up, we are all walking together on the same road, physically. Naturally, as children age, we come to a point where it’s time to let go and let them take their own path. They break off from the common road we’re all on and they diverge.

While they take a new road to physically travel, we are still walking forward together in spirit. They are on their road, I am on mine, but I know they are there, on their path. My heart and mind are tracking their journey. I am still walking “with” them in spirit and praying for them.

With Cooper, my spirit knows he’s no longer even on the road. We were walking together, and now, I walk on my path with my wife, and his path is empty. There’s no Cooper on the diverged road.

Notice the negation.

My attempt here is to give some broader understanding of grief by understanding it as a negation, an emptiness, rather than an expression of what we observe.

Here’s one more example: three years ago, I had a bone marrow biopsy performed on the iliac crest of my pelvis, on my backside. After numbing the area, the doctor inserted a large-gauge needle into the hollow of my bone and drew marrow out with a suction/vacuum.

I will never forget the feeling of the vacuum pulling marrow out of my bones. I almost passed out, and I told the doctor I was fading. I felt nauseous and ill. I’ve never experienced that feeling in my life, and I never want to again.

Losing Cooper is something like the spiritual equivalent of that medical procedure. A large-gauge needle inserted into my soul and sucking out some of the spiritual marrow.

Pulling the breath from my lungs.

Like the Dementors in Harry Potter pulling on the soul.

This is why death hurts, especially the death of a child. Cooper occupied time and space and filled our lives with positive attributes. Now, nothing.

The question I have for life, for the Universe, is: What now fills this empty space? Or, as a grieving father, do I now accept that the rest of my life will be lived with an aching hollowness at the core of my being?

In life, it’s obvious that there is a natural order of things, or there should be. Beyond the aching hole of losing a child, my biological-spiritual system is abundantly aware that the natural order has been disrupted.

Consider this quote:

“The death of a child is one of the most painful events that an adult can experience and is linked to complicated/traumatic grief reactions (Prigerson et al., 1999). For parents, the dissolution of the attachment relationship with the child elicits severe anxiety and other negative emotions associated with loss (Bowlby, 1980). Parents might also experience guilt about having been unable to protect the child (Gilbert, 1997). Furthermore, because the death of a child defies the expected order of life events, many parents experience the event as a challenge to basic existential assumptions (Wheeler, 2001).” —National Center for Biotechnology Information¹

The death of a child does challenge basic existential assumptions. If the profound challenges of child loss can strike me, what else does life have in store for me? Is there another boogeyman just around the corner? How safe is this place? Can I trust life? Can I trust… God?

Losing a child makes me question the basic order of creation.

I think I know why I have not been angry with God. I’m not angry with God because, after all, I’m not even sure God exists.

Do you feel me? Can you understand?

To those who have lost a child and still have faith, I am watching, listening, and learning.

1. Rogers, C. H., Floyd, F. J., Seltzer, M. M., Greenberg, J., & Hong, J. (2008). “Long-term effects of the death of a child on parents’ adjustment in midlife.” Journal of Family Psychology, 22(2), pp. 203-211, https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.22.2.203 ↩︎