Is it normal to still do math about how old my son would be?

Yes, and there is no point at which it is expected to stop. Many bereaved parents keep an ongoing, unwanted awareness of the age their child would be, the grade they would be in, the milestones that would be happening. It is a common part of this kind of grief, not something you are doing wrong.

What do I say to a parent whose son died?

Say his name. Ask about him if you want to know something, rather than avoiding the subject to protect yourself. Do not offer reasons or silver linings; there usually aren't any that help, and the parent is not looking for you to supply one.

How can I talk to my son who died?

However feels honest. Some parents talk to a photograph, or at the grave, or in the car. A Wind Phone gives you a receiver to hold and a line connected to nothing, which for some people makes starting easier, but there is no required method.

Losing a son

Out of order, and no framework for it.

There is no framework for this. Children are supposed to outlive their parents, and knowing that sentence is true does nothing: it does not prepare you and it does not soften the fact that you are here anyway, having buried your son.

Nothing on this page is going to tell you it gets easier, or that there is a lesson in it, or that time does anything reliable to a loss this size. This is a place to say his name out loud, and a few plain things about what that grief tends to look like from the inside.

The future tense that keeps arriving

You do the math you don't want to do. How old he would be this year. What grade, what job, what apartment. The number updates every birthday whether you want it to or not, attached to a life that stopped and a version of him the world will never see. That math is not offered here as a comfort, because it isn't one. It is just what the mind keeps doing, on its own schedule, for a long time.

It shows up in small places too. A boy his age at the grocery store. A name on a class list. The specific ring of a phone that used to mean him calling. None of it announces itself first.

The date itself will come back around every year, whether or not you are ready for it. Some parents mark it. Some leave the day unplanned on purpose, because planning around it feels like handing it too much power. There is no version of that choice that is the correct one. You are allowed to change your mind about it from one year to the next.

What people will say, and what you don't owe them

People will reach for something to offer you, because your grief is unbearable to stand near and they want it to be smaller. They will suggest reasons. They will suggest silver linings. Almost none of it will fit, and none of it needs to. You are not required to manage anyone else's discomfort about your son's death, including at his own funeral.

Some people will avoid saying his name at all, worried it will upset you. It will not upset you more than the silence does. There is a separate page for parents who lost a daughter, because the specifics are not the same, but the instruction underneath both is identical: say the name.

What this is

This is not a form of therapy and it does not claim to be. It is a receiver connected to nothing, in case there is something you need to say to him that has nowhere else to go. The idea started in a garden in Japan, built by a man who needed the same thing after his own loss. You can pick up the line at three in the morning if that is when the missing gets loud, and put it down again without having said the thing you meant to say. There is no wrong way to use it.

What you lost was your son. That is the whole size of it. Nothing here is going to make it smaller than that.

Pick up the Wind Phone

Say what you need to say. The line is connected to nothing: no one hears you, nothing is recorded, nothing is stored.

If today is heavier than usual, Find A Helpline lists free, confidential support lines worldwide, staffed by people who will actually answer.