When a child dies, the instinct to care does not disappear. This reflection explores attachment, embodied grief, and the ways parents may continue to express love through presence, touch, tending, and time with their child after death.

Death is often treated as a single moment, but the hours that follow may still be part of the passage. This reflection considers vigil, accompaniment, liminality, and what it might mean to remain close to the newly deceased as they cross from this life into whatever comes next.

Modern medicine and professional death care have given us extraordinary gifts. But as death moved into institutions, we also lost some of our familiarity with tending the dead. This reflection asks what might be reclaimed through participation, proximity, ritual, and community care.