“My heart breaks for all the parents and children who had to let go of each other”

Patricia van Liemt is a radio presenter, writer and mother of Maria (12) and Phaedra (9). Every Friday she writes striking, honest, funny and above all recognizable columns about her life and motherhood.

What a heartbreaking week we have had. I say ‘we’, but of course I mean the families in Turkey and Syria.

So much sorrow, so much suffering and so unjust. And then that one image. That image that tore everyone’s heart and whose indescribable pain is already too much for you as a spectator. A pain that extends beyond our human capacity. I’m talking about the picture of a father holding his deceased daughter’s hand. You only see the hand of the 15-year-old girl. Her body lies, on what I filled in myself, her own mattress. Overtaken in her sleep by a heavy block of concrete that has brutally knocked the life out of her young body.
You see that his soul has left his body through his eyes. They are open, but looking at nothing.
They buried under the rubble, he under his feelings.
Because the loss of a child transcends all other grief. Too much encompassing to feel.
And all I could think was: when will you let go of your dead child’s hand?
That’s emotionally impossible, isn’t it?

Another indescribable suffering came to us through the image of a newborn baby, still attached to the deceased mother by the umbilical cord. The baby is doing well after some bruises and is called ‘wonder baby’.

And these are just two stories from two families. The death toll has now reached 7,900 and the search has been hampered by icy temperatures and the merciless winter weather. My heart breaks for all the parents and children who have had to let go of each other because of this terrible drama.

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Would you rather listen to Patricia’s column? Which can. Every Friday between 2 and 4 pm she reads it on Wild FM.

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