There is no doubt that the most agonising pain that a human being can experience is that of when you lose your child. It is a pain that knows no boundary, that crosses each and every culture.

When you first hold that new baby in your arms an instinct as old as time itself takes hold without you even knowing it – the instinct to love and protect that child for as long as you live.

For John Travolta, the need to protect his son, Jett, was so strong that he personally piloted the planes his family used to travel in. If they were going to get somewhere then he himself would ensure that they got there, safely, by his own hand.

But sometimes no matter how far you go to protect your child the unforeseeable and unimaginable can still happen – as John Travolta has recently and tragically discovered. Despite the unbelievable lengths he went to in order to provide the utmost safety and security for his 16 year old son during his brief life, his son was taken from him in one unexpected moment – in the bathroom of his own home.

He probably felt that his son would never be safer than in the confines of the family home and that very aspect would no doubt make his sons loss so much more difficult to bear. The actor could afford the very best for a son who had experienced so many health problems during his childhood; his own planes, the tightest personal security, the best medical care there is.

That is what makes the unexpected, when it happens in such familiar and seemingly safe surroundings, so much more unbearable and shocking. He made the world safe for his son to live in only to lose him in, of all places, the bathroom.

There are parents all over the world who now have one thing in common with the wealthy, ultra-famous John Travolta – he, like they, has lost a child. It does not matter how old the child was – baby, toddler, teen or adult – the pain for the parent is exactly the same and it lasts a lifetime.

It is the most basic instinct of all.