To outlive your own child must be the cruellest blow a parent can suffer. It is a reversal of the natural order; the worst nightmare that we hope will never come true. Yet thousands of children die in Ireland every year, from illness, disease, accidents, even by their own hand -- and their parents find themselves left flailing in an ocean of despair.

Four-year-old Adam Bennett left this world the same way he entered it, in a blaze of glorious sunshine.

"It was a very tough birth, but as soon as he was born, at six in the morning, the clouds went by and the sun shone in the window on his little head. I said to Jackie: 'Here's our little angel'," remembers Adam's dad Eoin "Benji" Bennett.

Benji and his wife Jackie are sitting at their kitchen table in Blackrock, Co Dublin, pointing out treasured photographs of all their children, Harry (7), Robbie (2) and two-month-old baby Molly. Adam is there too, wearing his favourite blue swimming shorts; hugging his beloved brother Harry; swinging a tennis racket. A beautiful little boy, all blond curls and deep, smiling brown eyes, it is hard to fathom that a fatal brain tumour was growing inside him even as he posed for these happy holiday snaps. >>> >>> "He showed no symptoms at all," says Benji. "Adam was extremely fit, very co-ordinated, he won an Under-6 tennis tournament when he was only four. He kicked footballs with both his feet, played golf with both hands. He was just this lively, vibrant kid."

This is the Adam that Benji has so faithfully recreated in his new series of children's books, the first of which -- Before You Sleep -- is on sale in Easons and other bookshops nationwide. He began to write them after Adam's sudden death, both as a tribute to Adam and as a way to get across "Adam's message" to "show your love for your family with a hug and a kiss". Benji's verses are beautifully illustrated by artist Roxanne Burchartz. Each leaf of the book shows a son and a father -- modelled on Adam and Benji -- enjoying adventures together. Each scene will be taken as the starting point for the other books in the series. Adam's Amazing Space Adventure will show Adam and Harry -- a very strong boy who loved his little brother so much -- taking an exciting trip around the planets.

The beach scene depicted in Before You Sleep is particularly poignant. Jackie and Benji spent their free time last summer, up to the week Adam died, in their "special place", Ballinacarraig Park in Wicklow, with Harry, Adam and Robbie.

"We have so many beautiful memories," says Benji, "It's like Adam packed in a lifetime of fun into his four years."

The memories of the joy and love that Adam and all his siblings have been showered with is of some small consolation to the Bennetts.

In August 2007, Adam fell ill with what seemed to be a tummy bug. They took him to a doctor and within half an hour of being admitted to hospital, Adam got sick again.

"All of a sudden. he went limp in my arms. That was it. He had a total seizure and went into a coma. He had a very aggressive vascular tumour -- the way it was described was that the tumour was like a balloon and, if you keep pumping it, it blows up, bursts, and you have a massive bleed."

A year on, the grief that continues to hit the Bennetts in waves -- "real physical pain in your gut" as Jackie describes it -- is undimmed by the year that has passed since Adam's funeral.

"In a way, on the day of the funeral, we were almost happy," says Jackie, disbelievingly. "We were lifted up on a wave of love from all our friends and our families."

Benji delivered an oration for Adam at the service, urging everyone touched by Adam's loss to take it as a reminder to love their families every day. It's a message now writ large in Before You Sleep.

Baby Molly has been a much-wanted and much-loved addition to the family. In a strange coincidence, Jackie discovered she was pregnant again on the day she and Benji went to bring Adam's ashes home. "Obviously, I know Molly is not Adam," she says, "but sometimes I think he and Molly passed each other on the way."

Friends have rallied around the Bennetts, with things as simple as a consoling word or food dropped into the house. Their family sent them to South Africa last Christmas so they would not have to spend their first one without Adam at home. Benji's bosses at Vodafone gave him a generous amount of time to be with the family. While they were away in Eurodisney, their "incredible, incredible" families remodelled their house, a project which had been underway before Adam died. The couple were left speechless by the generosity and love behind the gesture.

But reminders of Adam are still everywhere. "Even in Supervalu, looking at a pack of Cheesestrings, it can hit you," says Jackie. Benji passed the school which Adam should have attended this year and made the "fatal mistake of looking in". He says: "I got stuck, I couldn't walk. I had to ring Jackie and say: "I can't make it up the hill, you have to come pick me up'."

Time is not a great healer, says Benji, but "love conquers time". Everyone deals with grief in their own way, say the couple.

For them, facing it head on with "love and positive thinking" is helping them to grope their way through. Barretstown's therapeutic family days have helped, as has the bereaved parents' organisation, Anam Cara.

They hope that the book, some of the proceeds of which will go to Barretstown, will send ripples out to parents everywhere.

"It started out as a way for me to tell people how incredible Adam was," says Benji. "But we have got so many letters, and in every single one people said that what happened to us made them want to go to their kids and hug and kiss them." Adam would approve.

For more information, or to order Before You Sleep by Benji Bennett, see www.adamsprintingpress.ie.

Only a parent who has lost a child can really know how it feels. The bereavement support group Anam Cara was set up specifically to put such heartbroken parents in touch with each other: a network of empathy.

Sharon Vard and Anna McGroddy, along with Grainne Quinn and Kate Burke, officially launched Anam Cara in February of this year. All four, like every member of Anam Cara, have lost a precious child. Sharon and Anna met outside the oncologist's room in St John's Ward in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin in circumstances that would make them instant friends, and define their friendship forever. Sharon's daughter, Rachel, and Anna's son, Eoin, were both diagnosed, on the same day, with the same rare, inoperable brain tumour.

"We became each other's anam cara (soul friend) there and then," says Sharon, "as she was the only person in the world who knew, as a mother, exactly the horror I was going through and how terrified I was. Our friendship started with that first hug and has survived the deaths of our two precious children. We have been in there for each other from that first day and our story and many other stories of loss and friendship makes up Anam Cara."

After Rachel died in 2004, and Eoin followed shortly afterwards in 2005, Sharon and Anna found that traditional bereavement counselling could not totally address their grief.

"I know myself that I would have found it hard after losing >>> >>> Rachel to go into a bereavement group where people had maybe lost elderly relatives," explains Sharon. "I lost my own dad and I was devastated because we were very close, but I have to say that when you lose a child the pain is off the Richter Scale. There are brilliant counsellors and services out there, but I found that what I really wanted to do was just talk to someone who had been through what I had."

Anna says that the aim of Anam Cara is to give others the chance to find the support that Sharon and she found in each other.

"Throughout the journey of myself and Sharon losing Eoin and Rachel, we came across so many parents who said: "We don't need counselling, we just want to talk about it." And we found it wasn't just parents who had lost children to sickness, it was across the spectrum of parents who lose their children -- and no matter what their age, they are always your children -- to road traffic accidents, suicides, accidents. There are services out there but this is geared towards the parent just wanting to talk about their child."

The core parents of Anam Cara man a support website -- where it is reiterated that it is not a counselling service, just a "website set up by bereaved parents for bereaved parents".

Anna says: "Our children are gone -- there is nothing we can do about that. But this is like me being able to pick up the phone to Sharon and asking: 'How did you get through this?' People don't have to come and have coffee at our satellite groups; they can just email us or maybe just see the website and know we are out there."

The satellite groups are growing across the country -- Sharon has driven from Dublin to Cork on the evening we speak, to address medical professionals there and make them aware of a local group for parents. A new group is to be launched in Northern Ireland, with the help of a couple who contacted Anam Cara after they lost their little girl.

"We have core values," says Sharon, "and they are to guide people, to respect each others' grief and the fact that each grief is unique. There is no judgement, no saying: 'My loss is worse than yours'. We don't make recommendations or tell people what they should or should not do. Everyone is just there to listen and be listened to."

The organisation, which now has official charity status, runs events to bring bereaved families together, but sometimes just knowing that you are not alone is the huge comfort that Anam Cara can offer.

"People think they are going mad, but knowing that someone else feels the same helps normalise what you are going through," explains Sharon. "I used to stand, lost, in front of the bread shelf in the shop for 10 minutes trying to decide whether to get white or brown. It's good to hear someone else say: 'I know what you mean, I used to do that too.' It gives you that little bit of hope, not that the grief will get smaller, but that you will be able to live with it."

Visit www.anamcara.ie for more details.

LEON, THE WATER ANGEL

Lynn Quinlan tentatively dips her toe in the water of the family pool in Marbella. She avoided getting into swimming pools since that fateful night when her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Leon drowned, in June 2004.

It is a tragedy which has haunted the Dublin family for the past four years but in their grief, Lynn and her husband, restaurateur Mark, found the strength to establish Water Angels, an educational campaign to highlight water-safety-awareness, both here and in Spain.

"What drove us to do this was that we didn't want another family to go through what we went through," explains Lynn, sitting outside Beckitts, their busy restaurant on Calle Camilla Jose Cella in Marbella.

The accident happened a year to the day after the Quinlans moved from Clonee , Co Meath with dreams of starting a new life in Spain. On the fateful night, Lynn slipped upstairs to change baby Kai, and Leon managed to get out of the house.

"Leon was probably in the water for two or three minutes. He had his nappy under his pyjamas and the wet nappy would have weigh-ed him down," said Mark.

People used to warn Lynn that Leon, with his striking long blond hair, could be taken because he was so chatty and friendly. She became paranoid and her first reaction that night was that someone had taken him -- but when she looked into the pool and saw the monkey on his pyjama top, she realised the horrible truth. Her second eldest son had got up from the couch, where he was having a bottle, went outside and ended up in the pool.

The couple run the Water Angels ball in Marbella each July to fund their awareness campaign, which warns how drowning can happen in less than an inch of water and it only takes as little as 60 seconds for a child to drown. Drowning is the third leading cause of accidental death among children under five.

"I would say Water Angels is a big factor in the water safety here during the summer months, when most drownings happen," said Mark. The couple want people to know that CPR makes matters worse because putting oxygen into lungs filled with water sends the oxygen to the brain. The correct things to do is to life a child on its side to let the water of the lungs, said Lynn.

In Ireland, the Water Angels organisation has funded a water safety teacher to instruct under-12s in the basics of water safety so they are more aware when they go abroad on holidays. Lynn is also a keen fan of water turtles bracelets, which trigger an alarm in the house once a child hits the water and the turtle gets wet.

"Water Angels is a tribute to Leon and I think we have made a huge difference. The law has been changed in Spain from February of this year and now you have to have a 1.2m fence around a private and a community pool in Spain, and if you don't, you face prosecution," says Mark.

The Quinlans urge parents not to use nappies in the pool but pull up pants which let the water out. For more information on the Quinlan's Water Angels organisation, contact www.waterangels org.