The parents of the Spanish Federation of Parents of Children with Cancer who have sadly lost their children because of this disease, take time claiming that the term "orphan" be accepted to refer to your painful situation. They believe that this word would help them keep their children's memories alive in society.
To do this, they have created a petition on Change.org with which they seek to gather 11,730 signatures: one for each small great fighter who left too soon, leaving a void impossible to fill but necessary to name.
The campaign, which was launched for the first time in October 2017, included a video with the participation of personalities from the world of television such as Silvia Jato, Ana Belén, Melani Olivares, Carlos Hipólito and Juan Echanove.
How to describe such a great pain in a word?
They say that losing a child is the biggest pain which a human being can face. It is not part of the natural law of life, and perhaps because of that, until now no one had dared to name it.
In Babies and more A father shares the 10 most important things he learned, one year after losing his son But parents of children who died due to cancer they need society to recognize them with a name, as is the case with people who lose their partner or children who lose their parents.
"We need to have a name that reminds them to feel them by our side forever. A word that reflects that behind the most terrible pain there has been the most incredible love a person can experience," they say.Therefore, in 2017 they launched a campaign with which they asked the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) to recognize the term "orphan" in the dictionary, to give visibility to this situation and that anyone could name them.
Socially normalize the term "orphan"
On April 9, representatives of the Spanish Federation of Parents of Children with Cancer met with the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Abascal, to re-raise their petition. But the work of the Academy is not to determine the terms that enter into the diction, but collect those that are most used in society.
In addition, they allege that the term "orphan" lacks philological basis and that there are other meanings in the dictionary with which to refer to this condition, such as the second meaning of "orphan" and the word "unmade."
Therefore, parents of deceased children call on society to let's all start using this term in our conversations, texts and writings, in order to be standardized and the SAR can accept it.
I hope in the not too distant future, the advances in the investigations avoid any type of infant death and a term is not necessary to refer to this sad reality. But while that time comes, it is not fair that parents of children who have died must face a linguistic vacuum to define their harsh reality.
