NPR

Krishna Gurung and his wife, Leela, lost their 7-year-old son when he accidentally strangled himself with a cord at their home in Nepal. In Kevin's memory, Gurung has created an eco-friendly village near Kathmandu that provides education, health care and jobs to people with leprosy and physical handicaps.

Published: February 09, 2010

by Linton Weeks

When your child dies, the immensity of still being alive strikes at your core. Your focus shifts back and forth between the grief you have and the gift you had.

You are overwhelmed by sorrow and loss and a sense of what might have been.

At the same time, you are thunderstruck by the joy and beauty and richness your child brought into the world.

You are awash with the deepest-aching pain. And yet you long to celebrate your child's brief, brilliant time on this planet.

That moment-to-moment tension, the never-ending whiplash to-and-fro between these two powerful instincts — the grief and the gift — drives you mad.