The Natural Order Of Things

Richard plays ukulele and is a singer songwriter, from BC Canada.

He and his wife have been married for 45+ years and had a son and a daughter. In 1991, at age 15 their son Nathan died from a short term illness.

The Natural Order of Things

This song is a about how un-natural it is to bury your child, and how the natural order of life has been broken.

The grief that follows the death of a child is one of the largest stressors that a family can live through. Following the death of their son, Richard and his wife attended a grief support group for bereaved parents called The Compassionate Friends (TCF). The group can be found in many countries of the world.

TCF Canada – National Website – https://www.compassionatefriends.org/

The Compassionate Friends Credo

We need not walk alone. We are The Compassionate Friends. We reach out to each other with love, with understanding, and with hope. The children we mourn have died at all ages and from many different causes, but our love for them unites us. Your pain becomes my pain, just as your hope becomes my hope. We come together from all walks of life, from many different circumstances. We are a unique family because we represent many races, creeds, and relationships. We are young, and we are old. Some of us are far along in our grief, but others still feel a grief so fresh and so intensely painful that they feel helpless and see no hope. Some of us have found our faith to be a source of strength, while some of us are struggling to find answers. Some of us are angry, filled with guilt or in deep depression, while others radiate an inner peace. But whatever pain we bring to this gathering of The Compassionate Friends, it is pain we will share, just as we share with each other our love for the children who have died. We are all seeking and struggling to build a future for ourselves, but we are committed to building a future together. We reach out to each other in love to share the pain as well as the joy, share the anger as well as the peace, share the faith as well as the doubts, and help each other to grieve as well as to grow. We Need Not Walk Alone. We Are The Compassionate Friends.

Grief Support Group Leader

“Who better to heal the wound of one, than he who has the wound himself.” – author unknown.

Grief causes a huge amount of stress on parents and their families. If the stress is not released, health problems can develop, so it is important to find ways to cope and release the stress.

After attending The Compassionate Friends for a few years, Richard felt that he needed to give back the grief support that was given to him and his wife by The Compassionate Friends. A handful of years later, he started and lead a new grief support chapter, that became a strong TCF chapter that still meets monthly to this day. Ten years later he repeated the process when he moved to a new town.

The natural response for bereaved parents is to deal with it themselves, like they do with most other things in their lives.

They fall back on coping strategies learned throughout their life. These strategies may or may not be effective in helping them successfully deal with the death of their child.

Richard suggests that the death of a child is too hard to attempt yourself, and a grief support group can provide much needed emotional support.

For those who have attended, they will find that the group helps them know the many aspects of grief that are so foreign at this stressful time.