LIVE BY DESIGN | How can we best respond when a dozen primary school children die in a road accident?

A minibus full of primary school children. Imagine the energy and noise levels as they chat, laugh and/or quarrel as they ride to school. A bakkie hits their vehicle from behind. The minibus overturns and bursts into flames. The driver and 12 of the children die.

Condolences are sent to the families. People try to find ways, practical and emotional, to support the grieving families and soothe their own sorrow. Parents, siblings, friends, relatives, peers, teachers, medical staff, neighbours – so many people affected.

Yes, there will be an investigation checking roadworthiness, whether or not the minibus was overloaded, and whether seat belts were in use. The outcome might help prevent more such accidents in the future, but none of these actions will bring back to life the children whose families are devastated.

As parents, we do not expect to bury our children. We are meant to give our children roots to grow and wings to fly, and eventually, when our time of elderliness comes, they will bury us.

But grief is neither quantitative nor timebound. I noticed that the reports highlight the family that had four cousins traveling together on that ill-fated minibus. Another parent may have lost their only child, whom they conceived after years of trying.

The mantra of grief expert David Kessler is that “grief is as unique as our fingerprints”. Kessler also advises that some people might appear to take grief in their stride and recalibrate their lives in just a few months, whereas the timeline may be a couple of years, if not longer, for others.

I expect the social work counsellors are visiting all the Merafong families – those who lost a child as well as those whose children survived. Survivor guilt is a phenomenon that children can experience too, not just adults.

What is to be learnt from experts about living with grief? Do we surrender? What can we best do to support those grieving?

Dr Lucy Hone wrote her book, Resilient Grieving, after her 12-year-old daughter, Abi, was killed by a driver who failed to stop. Her best friend, Ella, and best friend’s mother, Sally, also lost their lives.

Hone writes of the advice given to her by social workers who paid home visits and who meant well. She and her husband were advised that the next five years would be the worst of their lives, and that the divorce rates for couples who have lost a child are extremely high, as relationships do not survive the trauma easily.

Hone, whose postgraduate research was on returning war veterans and which factors influence their resilience, decided to apply her research findings to herself. She had identified three strategies common to those whom she assessed as the most resilient; those best able to recover from trauma, tragedy and grief.

What would I aspire to put into practice for my children if I were the parent who had lost a child?

• Create a memory box: What clothes, books, soft toys, drawings do you have that are part of your and their sibling(s) memories?
• Sharing stories: These I would write down afterward (but sooner rather than later) because later we might feel sad if memory fades and we cannot remember the details. But the talking is important. There are people who live with grief that they were not able to talk about “my sister died; my mother packed her things and we were not allowed to talk about her. It was as though she never existed.”
• Drawing: Not all of us are good at talking our feelings aloud. Sometime its easier to draw and express ourselves on paper with colour and imagery, not words.
• Create memory occasions: My child’s birthday, the anniversary of death as well as celebrating them on 1 November, when I try to celebrate and honour all those who I have loved who have passed.

Finally for myself, for my husband, for my remaining children and for the life I am still to live I would tell myself:

• Choose life: “Do not lose what you have to what you have lost.”

I would remind myself daily of Hone’s words reminding herself that she had given birth to three children, and while Abi had died, Hone was still a mother to two teenage boys who needed their parent.

It is much easier said than done. The hurdles of many firsts lie ahead. The surviving children will go back to school for the first time without their deceased playmates. That will be hard. Every bereaved family will start to live through all the inevitable calendar firsts: The first birthday, the first religious festival … There are also the pop-up firsts, the one’s you don’t know will side-wipe you until they do – laying table to supper and there’s an empty chair, grocery shopping and reaching for the favoured Frosties, only to put back the box when it hits you that your child is no more.

There’s comfort in collective mourning. It is important that grief is publicly acknowledged and witnessed. In March, on the Easter weekend, a bus crash in Limpopo killed 44 Botswana nationals who had been travelling to an Easter pilgrimage of the Zion Christian Church. Five thousand people gathered to attend the mass funeral, including dignitaries, acknowledging the pain of the tragedy.

Let us hope that the grieving families of the 12 children who died this week will find comfort from the condolences and support they are offered.