Excerpt from A Broken Heart Still Beats; after your child dies. It is a collection of grief anthologies. This quote is from Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage through Grief by Tom Crider whose only child, Gretchen, died in a fire at 21.
At night when he can't sleep, he reads books on death and religion. Some of them say she is not really dead. Some say God has other plans for her. He has never believed in a God who controls human lives or decrees their deaths, and he's always felt the idea of immortality was wishful thinking. Now, with his mind and emotions in turmoil, he seems to be scavenging for ways to keep her from having vanished. He finds himself ready to believe just about anything. He's like a beggar in winter, clawing through box after box of old coats, looking for one that fits...
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but unlike the psalmist, I fear evil everywhere.
It's deeper than fear. really, it's dread. He feels like a dog who's lived through being run over once and who jumps at the slightest sound to make sure nothing is coming at him again. When the phone rings, his heart bounds. He thinks someone else has died. In a store or on the street, he hears a child scream, but instead of delight, he hears horror, and turns to see if the child needs help. Several times a day, spurts of fright splash up from the sea of dread.
In addition to the expected definition of dread - "to anticipate with anxiety, alarm, or apprehension; fear intensely," he finds this also: "fear mixed with awe or reverence."
Yes, there is awe in what I feel. It's what I imagine a mole might feel when the top of its burrow is scraped away by a grizzly. It comes from being one who is tiny in the presence of a greater, malevolent power. This power snatched my Gretchen away from me. What will it do next?
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