I lost a daughter as a result of congenital cardiac disease 9 years ago when she was 11. I am a somewhat quite "lurker/member" here. But I also belong to a fathers' support group, "www/fathers-forever.org", which is a group for men who have had a child die. It is very gratifying to see George Bush Sr. shave his head at age 89 to support a member of his security detail dealing with a critical pediatric cancer. I had read somewhere along the line that Bush Sr. had a child die. So did President Eisenhower, and JFK, and many, many other much less notable people. However, in years gone by, the advice to men like us was to bury the memory and to "move on" in silence. Thankfully, now, that is not the conventional wisdom, and it's OK for us who have suffered such a loss, to be open about it and thereby offer support to others who have suffered a similar loss, as we do move on. Any SBG members reading this eMail are welcome to look up the "Fathers-Forever.org" website and be in contact through the website or in PM to me.
Kudos to George Sr. for doing this. As we who have suffered such a loss know (even if we have other children), for our children who have died, we are truly "fathers forever". Witness George Bush, who 40 yeas later, is offering support to a father in danger of sufferings such a tragic loss. Hopefully, this dad will not suffer this ordeal. However, for those who have had such a loss, while things change and improve over time, one never really gets over such a loss, as George Sr. has demonstrated.
