How did Doug and Anne face the loss? Doug explains: “I was at the Kingdom Hall when a friend told me I was urgently wanted at home. When I arrived at the house, I learned the worst. I could not believe it. I had been the last person to touch Rachel that night. Now she was dead. I broke down and wept, along with Anne. It was the only time I wept.”

Awake!: “What about the funeral? How did that affect you?”

“The surprising thing was that neither Anne nor I cried at the funeral. Everyone else was weeping.” Then Anne interjected: “Yes, but I have done plenty of crying for both of us. I think it really hit me a few weeks after the tragedy, when I was finally alone one day in the house. I cried all day long. But I believe it helped me. I felt better for it. I had to mourn the loss of my baby. I really do believe that you should let grieving people weep. Although it is a natural reaction for others to say, ‘Don’t cry,’ it doesn’t really help.”

Doug continued: “Sometimes innocent remarks were made that were not helpful, such as: ‘As Christians we should not mourn as others do.’ Now, I know that. But I can assure you, when you lose a child, at that moment even the firm knowledge of the resurrection is not going to prevent you from weeping and mourning. After all, Jesus wept when Lazarus died, and Jesus knew he was going to resurrect him.”

Awake!: “Did Rachel’s death cause any strain between you?”

Anne was quick to answer: “Yes, it did. I suppose we had different ways of mourning our loss. Doug wanted to put up photos of Rachel around the house. That was the last thing I wanted. I didn’t need those reminders. I didn’t want it to look as if we were making a cult out of her death. Anyway, Doug understood my feelings, and he took the photos down.”

Awake! asked Doug what had sustained him and Anne through their grief.

“I remember that the funeral talk was helpful. What comforted us most of all that day was our Christian hope in the resurrection. Her loss was felt deeply, but the hurt was softened by God’s promise through Christ of seeing her again here on earth. From the Bible, we saw that the effects of death are reversible. The speaker showed from the Bible that Rachel was not in heaven ‘as a little angel’ nor in Limbo awaiting release to heaven. She was simply asleep in the common grave of mankind.”​—See John 5:28, 29; 11:11-14; Ecclesiastes 9:5.

Awake!: “How would you answer those who say that ‘God took her’?”

“It would be a selfish God who would take little children from their parents. The Bible’s answer at Ecclesiastes 9:11 is enlightening: ‘Time and unforeseen occurrence befall them all.’ And Psalm 51:5 tells us that all of us are imperfect, sinful, from the time of our conception, and the eventuality for all men now is death from any number of causes. Sometimes death strikes before birth, resulting in a stillbirth. In Rachel’s case, she contracted something as an infant that overwhelmed her system​—an unforeseen occurrence.”