What is a parent who has lost a child called? "Vilomah."

In my search for the right word, I discovered Karla F. C. Holloway, a professor of English at Duke University who herself lost a child. Holloway writes that she felt “punished by this empty space of language.” Noting that the word widow comes from Sanskrit, she decided to look for another word from that ancient language to name her tragic identity. She found vilomah, which means “against the natural order.” In response to Holloway, scholars pointed out that the original Sanskrit word does not connote the death of a child. But it does connote the inversion of what is right, the opposition of what is natural.

It is the inversion of what is right, the opposition of what is natural, that the child should die before the parent. Vilomah is legacy erased, a genetic line extinguished as if it had never existed, oblivion, a reversal of creation itself. Yet claiming a name provides a balm. As Holloway puts it, “the difference between today’s grief and tomorrow’s is that now there is a name. Vilomah. A parent whose child has died.”

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