Jizo statues in Japan are dressed by grieving parents

“Grief lasts as long as it lasts. There will always be a hole in your heart that’s the shape of that life, which you knew however brief. People sometimes try to have another child right away, but that hole will never be Filed in by anybody else. It will be with you your whole life, but it will soften and get filed in over time. It gets filed with love and happy memories, and with the prayer or hope that the life energy will go on—that it will reemerge in a beneficial place.” 

(Jan Chozen Bays, Zen teacher)