Hearing the traumatic news of a death usually throws you into a state of shock and disbelief as you try to defy reality and pretend it hasn't happened. The sheer intensity of your feelings, the utter despair at the loss, and sometimes the intolerable physical pain you may suffer, all lead to a sense of numbness. Unitl it has happened to you you will never know how the death of someone close can be the most devastating experience you'll ever have.

The death of your child, however, turns your world completely upside down. To watch someone to whom you gave life, who's an extension of yourself, lying dead while you're still alive, challenges the natural order of things.

The loss is absolute. Parents are left making sense out of nonsense. Children should grieve the loss of parents, not the other way round. It's normal to grieve and everyone expresses their grief in their own unique way. There are no rules and no right or wrong ways. For parents, the frightening intensity and rawness of emotions they experience can make them feel like screaming at the cruelty of the world. They might find themsleves 'shutting down' and withdrawing through fear of being drowned in their grief.

Bereavement literally means being robbed and deprived of hope. As the reality of your loss sinks in, you may feel anger, hatred - and guilt. Someone must be to blame and it's all too easy to wrongly blame yourself.

Guilt and anger sometimes not only affect the bereaved, but those closest to them too. Losing a child can strain even the strongest partnerships. Sometimes a grieving parent will shut his partner out, adding to his or her feelings of isolation. Conversely, if you lose a child from a previous marriage, it may seem as if the only other person who can possibly understand the loss and share your grief is your ex-partner. This can be very confusing and cause great pain in current relationships.

Even after the rawness of the feelings fades, you may undergo long periods of adjustment, not all of which are clearly understood. If you catch yourself having too much fun, or even feeling that life is starting to be bearable again, this can turn to guilt, or renewed grief that your child is no longer there to share it.

Basic day-to-day existence - let alone meeting everyone's expectations as a friend, family member or professional in a stressful workplace - uses enormous amounts of energy. How many friends, relatives and co-workers will be able to cope with the continuing exhaustion, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, depression, self-pity and apparently irrational behaviour at times such as anniversaries?

There's no time limit on grief and you may continue to feel bereaved at every stage of the life your child would've enjoyed had they lived: at their graduation, at their wedding, for your absent grandchildren. Nobody fully recovers from the death of a child: they adjust to it as best as they can.

The BBC have very useful advice on coping with bereavment of all types on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/bereavement/bereavement_childdies.shtml