In the natural order of things, those who are parents, expect that each of their children will outlive them and so their expectations when it comes to their children are almost always built around their desire and their objective that their children have a quality, long-lasting, and fruitful life, of which, it is thus the parent’s duty to do then their good part to assist in this happening -- for parents, want the best for their children, and to the degree that they can help assure success and happiness for them, this is their heartfelt desire and their abiding comfort to have.
Yet, as much as we may want our children to always outlive us, and hence to take the mantle from us, so as to carry on proudly the heritage of our family name, it has to be admitted that future events do not always pan out that way. That is to say, despite modern obstetrics and superior pediatric health care along with all the pediatric medicines and vaccines that are available for children, thereby best providing for these children, the health protection so needed to properly mature and to grow, there is still those children, that will meet death before their parents, because of various events, either foreseen or unforeseen, such as because of the life choices that they have made, or the nature of the work that they do which is inherently dangerous, such as being a frontline soldier, or simply the misfortune of an accident, such as a fatal car crash or similar.
There is probably nothing much more devastating for a parent, than to live to see their own child, which they brought into this world, predecease them, for the parents thereby know because of their child’s untimely death, that their child’s life has not turned out the way that the natural order of things would have so dictated. So too, parents who lose children will tend to second-guess their past decisions, as to whether, perhaps, they were a contributing factor in the loss of their child, or whether they could have done more to prevent or to preclude such. Finally, with the loss of a child, there is the ending of the dream that parents had for that child, of which because that ending is not the one so envisioned, this is a constant source then of pain and discomfort.
That which we brought into this world, we expect to outlive us – so too, we often expect our children to accomplish more than us, for our grandest hope is that each generation that comes after us is a generation that gets ever better and ever more successful. When, though, our child leaves this world before us, and especially when this is completely unexpected and tragic, the devastation of that loss, can upset the dynamics of a given family so dramatically, that parents may split up, or simply not be the same people that they once were, for that which they had highest hopes and dreams for, cannot ever now happen or be achieved -- for their child is no longer there to actualize such, and therein lies the deepest of unexpected and undesired tragedies.