Carol Vautour says she was just looking for some people she could relate to.
In August of 2017, the family found their son deceased in his apartment.
“I immediately went into counselling after the initial shock which was absolutely horrendous,” she said.
“The one on one counselling really served a great purpose at the time but I felt that I needed more because I needed people who understood. The counsellors had never lost a child and could not comprehend how I was feeling.”
Vautour discovered there was no group or organization in town where she could meet with people who could relate to her loss.
However, she found out about an organization called the Compassionate Friends of Canada, and after meeting with them she decided to open up a local chapter of the Compassionate Friends of North Bay’s Child Loss Support Group.
Vautour says the local organization, which has 30 members, first met in the March of 2018.
“The connection is instant and the bond that we develop is incredible,” said Vautour.
‘We have become a family.”
She says new members are welcomed with big hugs all around.
“The understanding of what we are going through, the different phases that we experience, and although grief is not linear - it is kind of all over the map - we can kind of understand each other and the patterns that develop over time in our grief,” she said.
One of the things all of those who have lost a child can relate to is triggers. Events or birthdays come to mind. Even incidents in the news like the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 brought back some painful memories.
”That was definitely a trigger,” Vautour said about the Humboldt Broncos incident.
“A lot of us were hockey parents so we felt it a little deeper I think than some other people would. Many triggers including songs, milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, holidays; they are all very difficult."
Sometimes those milestones are life events that their children’s friends are now attaining.
“A lot of us our children would be at an age they would be getting married, starting a family, starting a career and we see the friends moving forward in their lives doing all those things and our children are still at the age that they died at and they always will be forever,” she said.
The Compassionate Friends will be celebrating the lives that have been lost during a candlelight remembrance ceremony on December 8 at Indulge Restaurant at 540 Lakeshore Drive from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
It will be the second year for the event in North Bay which will be part of a worldwide ceremony.
“Our ceremony really brings a lot of support and the feeling of family, comradery, understanding amongst us all because we are all there for the same reason, we have all lost a child and we all bare that cross for the rest of our lives,” said Vautour.
“Nothing will ever change that, the pain does not go away. It may get easier and we may have a somewhat normal life again.”
