The funeral I witnessed today was one of the most emotional I’ve seen this in recent memory. Funerals are never easy, but this particular service brought me to tears.

The mass funeral of the teenagers who unfortunately lost their lives in one of the freakish events that took place at the Enyobeni tavern really got to me.

The fact that I have two daughters, one of whom is a teenager, makes it much more difficult for me to fathom the anguish of losing any of them.

It is never appropriate for parents to bury their children; rather, children are supposed to bury their parents when they pass away.

These kinds of occurrences should never become the norm.

How does one get over the passing of a loved one? More specifically how does a parent get over losing a child?

I don’t know, I have no answers.

Trying to answer questions like this can be extremely challenging. Even if I’ve experienced loss before, each person’s story and mental make-up are unique.

I have come to learn that, no matter how similar or close your circumstance is, you can never completely know how another person is experiencing or dealing with death.

As a first lesson, I’ve learned that we can’t suppress our feelings. Regardless of how you feel about it, they are exactly what they are.

We need to totally immerse ourselves in and experience the events that have overwhelmed us in order to come to terms with them.

This is the most difficult element of dealing with the loss of a loved one. It’s not for the faint of heart, as I’ve met people who’ve gone decades without truly accepting the loss of a loved one.

I have realised that it’s important to give ourselves permission to act like a victim every once in a while.

Jennifer Aniston reportedly stated that if something negative occurred in her life, she allowed herself a whole day to act like a victim. That is a fantastic concept.

Take as much time as you need to play the victim, but be aware that this opportunity won’t last forever.

There is a heartwarming story that tells of a mother who traveled all the way to see the Buddha in the hopes that he may bring her small son back from the dead.

He promised that he would carry it out if she could bring food from a home in the village that had not been affected by the loss.

The woman went around the village and knocked on the doors of all the homes, and she discovered that every single family had suffered some kind of loss.

She came to the conclusion that being human means that some point you will experience some form of loss in your life. However the game of life must continue on.

More than any other experience in life, death has the potential to make us realise that our time here is limited. It is up to us to give it significance and to make it count as much as we can.