A PALL of gloom hovers heavily over the Ateneo de Manila Grade School campus. The sound of young boys running and playing is not as loud as it was a week ago. In the parking lot in the Loyola Heights campus, Quezon City, close to the pick-up point, a few-days?-old monument stands.

Amiel Alcantara, 10, was run over last Tuesday afternoon, on his first day back in school after a successful boy scouts? camping trip in Bolinao, Pangasinan. In the blink of an eye, on a scorching afternoon, the Alcantara family?s life was changed forever.

Traumatic loss is defined as sudden and outside the normal range of experience. It overwhelms the bereaved?s resources, leaving them feeling helpless. Resolving a traumatic loss is often a complicated process that takes longer than any form of grief. It places tremendous strain on family and community.

The Ateneo Grade School now grapples with this loss?the first of its nature in the sprawling campus. There have been students figuring in vehicular accidents along Katipunan road, but none like this one inside the campus and where another parent is involved.

Some of Amiel?s classmates said they continue to busy themselves with schoolwork and projects because exams are set the second week of March. They go about their business quietly, a classmate says, but he has noticed that they haven?t been playing as much since Amiel died and that the class is more quiet.

Jonny Salvador, grade school assistant headmaster, said the school has sent a grief guide to members of the Ateneo community. ?We are mobilizing the support systems within the structure of our school (guidance counselors, class advisers and department coordinators) to identify those who are in most need at the moment of counseling. While we believe that it is cathartic for everyone to go through a process, our first step is to address those in the immediate circle.?

Dr. Martin Moreno, Amiel?s uncle, told me that the Ateneo immediately offered the grade school chapel as venue for the wake. ?The administration also sent food,? Dr. Moreno said on the first night of the wake.

The Moreno-Alcantaras is a large, close-knit clan. It was comforting to see how they were all there pulling together for a loved one. It was Dr. Moreno who first arrived at New Era hospital after Amiel was rushed there. Being the doctor in the family, he faced the burden of having to make the crucial decisions. It was he who met his sister Melanie, who had not known yet that her youngest son had already passed away. He was the one she requested to notify Amiel?s father Pepe.

Amiel?s siblings appear to be all right, like most young children are amid a loss. However, one can only imagine their pain. Avie, 13, had helped pull his brother from under the van. His sister Jana, 7, was pushed out of harm?s way by their yaya?what painful images remain with them?

Anna Lou Moreno, their aunt, said they will have to deal with issues soon, after Amiel is laid to rest.

At the wake, Yaya Tata, who saved the two kids, sat quietly in a wheelchair, her legs bandaged up.

Then there is the legal battle ahead.

Open and honest communication is an essential tool of families to move on and heal. In this case, not only the family, but also the school community, has been traumatized. Add everyone else involved in the accident?the van?s driver who is herself a parent, the drivers of other vehicles who also got hit, and those who were in the parking lot that Tuesday afternoon and witnessed the accident.

If grief and healing is to be a collective experience, family members, school officials and administrators must truly listen to each other, difficult it may be. Sensitivity to one another?s grief pattern is also essential because each person grieves differently.

My grief professor used to say ?One loss, many griefs.? Amiel?s classmates will miss him and grieve for him not in the same manner his best buddies will. His teachers may not grieve his loss in the same manner as the scoutmaster who worked very closely with him. His parents will each have different ways of dealing with their grief, as do his aunts, uncles and grandparents.

What has happened to Amiel is every parent?s worst nightmare. You cannot stop and think of him without remembering your own child. As I pondered why many other parents like myself were deeply affected by Amiel?s passing, I remember what Gibran once wrote? ?When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.? It could have happened to anyone?s child. The woman behind the wheel could have been any parent.

It is good that apologies have been offered, the driver and her family will have their own deep grief. However, as one mother who lost a child in an accident where a co-parent was behind the wheel, told me: ?The anguish and grief is not the same. I?m sure he lives with the guilt every day, but he did not lose a son, we did.?

And so the road to healing is long and arduous, where forgiveness and faith play important roles. Our prayers for discernment are for all parties involved. May they all find a higher meaning to Amiel?s departure.

E-mail the author at cathybabao@gmail.com.