For more than two decades, I have studied parental responses to a child’s death. Why This Loss Reaches So DeeplyA child is woven into a parent’s identity, responsibilities, family structure, and imagined future. A child’s death reverses this assumed order and removes both a present relationship and a future that had become psychologically real. Healing Does Not Mean Letting GoThe goal is not to detach from the child or replace grief with positive thinking. Third, the child’s life must become larger than the child’s death.