Suleika Jaouad

But now, I’m not so sure, because cancer does a weird thing to you. It takes who you are and what you think you know and throws that all in the trash.”

We call those who have lost their spouses “widows” and children who have lost their parents “orphans,” but there is no word in the English language to describe a parent who loses a child. Your children are supposed to outlive you by many decades, to confront the burden of mortality only by way of your dying. To witness your child’s death is a hell too heavy for the fabric of language. Words simply collapse.