Are there degrees of sorrow in the death of a child?

I don't know the answer to that question.

I know in our first pregnancy, one of our premature twin sons lived only 13 days.  It was 1969.  Randall died, but, I'm glad to say, Russell is alive and well more than 44 years later.

I ponder the question as I think about a little four-year-old girl whose life expectancy is short.
Callie's dad was one of my students at Anderson University.  He and his wife and Callie and her three preadolescent brothers live in High Point, North Carolina.
You probably never get over the death of a child.  The general expectation is that we will die before our children. When it doesn't go that way .  .  . when it doesn't go that way .  .  .

Each grief is different.  We didn't have long to ponder the fact that Randall was going to die.  But we had years to deal with his death after the fact.  With lack of oxygen reaching the brain, he probably would have been mentally deficient if he had lived.
I knew babies die.  I knew other people's babies die.  But somehow I didn't know my baby would die. We prayed earnestly for his survival, and when death came, it hit hard.  For many months, a couple of years, maybe longer, I winced every time I saw twins, of any age or either gender.

Grief for Callie's parents is different from ours.  They don't know when or exactly how, but they've had longer than we did to try to come to grips with this reality because they've lived with it for years.
Callie has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), which I liken to a child's version of Lou Gehrig's or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
In an Internet posting, the parents acknowledge, "With SMA, there is no treatment, but there are many interventions that can be done."  They confess, it's easy to cling to the idea that these interventions can somehow save her.  But reality returns, and they realize they can only buy her time.
Bottom line: "As horrible as it is, our little girl was not made to survive."
http://www.calliegolden.org/blog/2013/08/17/summer-news/

Perhaps Callie's parents are paying out their grief on the installment plan, but I suspect there still will be a balloon payment when the end comes.

People said horribly insensitive things to me when Randall died:

"WELL, YOU STILL HAVE THE OTHER ONE."
Yes, we still had -- still have -- "the other one." But that word did nothing to assuage our grief.

"WITH HIS DIAGNOSIS, YOU'RE BETTER OFF."
That's not for you to say. If it's true, we need to determine that for ourselves over the course of time.

"WE STILL HAVE ROMANS 8:28."
Yes, we still have God's promise that He will work all things together for good.  But this is not a spiritual prescription pill to hand to someone locked in grief.  This is a personal testimony from someone who has worked through difficulty and arrived at that conclusion for himself/herself.

I still don't know the answer to my question.  But I know our hearts ache for this dear couple, their three all-boy sons, and this beautiful, alert, sensitive little daughter.

I don't know the answer, but here's what I believe:
Healing comes as we are able to claim God's sustaining love and grace, but that doesn't come overnight.  Years ago, when Cort Flint was pastor of our First Baptist Church, Anderson, South Carolina, he wrote a helpful little book whose very title was therapeutic: Grief's Slow Wisdom.