At the Tiny Tim & Friends Clinic death and loss can be a daily part of our lives. We deal with some of the most vulnerable children and adolescents, often either reaching them too late, or their social and medical problems are beyond what we can help, or can be dealt with within the limitations of the Zambian Healthcare and social support systems. 

Whilst the loss of any child or patient never gets any easier, working in this field with vulnerable individuals, it is never usually sudden or completely unexpected. Dealing with vulnerable populations you have to quickly learn how to adapt to maintain your own sanity in what can often feel like a senseless loss.

They say there are seven stages to grief; shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, sadness and finally acceptance or hope. Working at Tiny Tim & Friends you often have to compartmentalize emotions and move quickly through the grieving process focusing not on the loss but accepting what has happened as a part of our work.
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Dr Tim used to tell me that with every patient loss there has to be a lesson learned. Without learning anything from a loss we cannot grow or move forward. By learning from loss we can become a better organisation and better people. It sometimes it takes longer to figure out what this lesson is than on other occasions.

So what have we learned from Tim’s passing to help us move forward towards acceptance and hope?

With people sharing their stories and memories of Tim with us, we learned that being dedicated to a cause, like Tim was, can be infectious and therefore impactful to individuals outside of our networks in positive ways you don’t always see. We learned that commitment to change really does have a huge impact on the lives of the vulnerable people we work with. And that by working together, in partnership, we can learn from each other, and attain bigger goals than when working alone. 

There is an African proverb – If you want to walk fast walk alone, if you want to walk far, walk together.
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Whilst acceptance of his death is a long way off for many, we try every day to walk together to emulate his passion and commitment to keeping Tiny Tim & Friends running. We hope that you can join us on this journey and continue to build a legacy in Tim’s name - where no child in Zambia has HIV. ​