I don’t know how I learned it, but at a young age I was introduced to the concept of what death was “supposed” to be.

It went something like this: you live a long, full life and then when you are so old your body stops working, you die peacefully – and painlessly – in your sleep. My vision of death was nice, neat, and acceptable.

The problem was that my ongoing experience with death over the course of my life didn’t seem to ever fit that ideal mold.

As a child, I heard about relatives who were old – but not that old – dying of things like cancer, heart attacks, or accidental deaths. I learned about my grandfather being killed during WWII when my father was only 2-years-old.

Before the age of 10, I had to face the ugly reality that the teenage daughter of one of my parent’s friends was dying of leukemia. Another of my parent’s friends – who I knew well – died after being thrown out of a car that lost control when her son fell asleep at the wheel.

The uncomfortable reality of death hit home as a young teen when a boy I occasionally babysat drowned. I vividly remember staring helplessly at his lifeless body on display at his wake. As a young adult, I sat with silent tears in my eyes at the funeral of a cousin in her early 20s who had died suddenly and unexpectedly from a blood clot in her leg.

I could go on and on.

The fact is death is sad and tragic, and mostly unfair.

Deaths that don’t fit that ideal mold of dying peacefully in very old age leave us with many unanswered questions. Questions that can be summed up in one word: Why? It keeps us up at night. It tortures us. And eats at the very fabric of our being.

For those who seek to comfort us, there is a common answer many offer in hopes of soothing our endless ache. I’d heard it many times before. But I never gave it much thought until I found myself on the receiving end after my 4-year-old daughter’s sudden death.

While there are variations, most often I was told, “It was part of God’s plan that we cannot understand and aren’t meant to know.”

Now I know the people who offer this condolence of God’s “grand plan” truly believe it and think it comforting. But to a person who has just lost someone they cannot imagine living life without, it often falls short of being a source of comfort. In fact, depending on the person and the circumstances, it can unintentionally cause a great deal of distress or even produce outright anger.

Here’s why a “grand plan” doesn’t comfort many of us: it most definitely wasn’t part of our plans.

And now our plan is forever ruined and irreversible. We are left with an excruciating, bleeding broken heart. And we can’t imagine a “grand plan” has any purpose other than to leave our lives in darkness and utter devastation. In the immediate aftermath of such a death, we see no silver lining, no hope, no purpose, and certainly no opportunity for lessons or growth.

Years after my daughter’s death, I no longer feel anger towards those who try to reassure me by reminding me of God’s grand plan or that my daughter is in a better place. I understand those words are the only thing they know what to say after such an unthinkable loss. And those words probably brought them some sense of safety and comfort in a situation that made no sense.

Whether or not I’ll ever be fully and utterly convinced that there is a grand plan, the sentiment will never offer me relief from the pain of losing my only daughter.

I’ve grown tremendously as a person since her death and have learned a lifetime of lessons in these past years. But I still ache for her and long for a future I’ll never have. I am still left with the reality that my plans were shattered the day she died, and I’ll always regret not having a future in which I get to watch my daughter grow.