Birds

 Birds of a Feather: A Children’s Story of Love, Loss, and What Came Next, by Tom Crice, illustrated by Ellen Rakatansky, 2018.

 

            The two biggest problems when a child is grieving is that the child’s feelings are often discounted and that adults try to protect the child from feeling pain by lying to them about what happened.

Possessions Left Behind

 

            After a loved one’s death, we have to decide what to do with their possessions. Although there are some things that we wish they would have taken with them, many of their possessions have stories and emotions attached—their favorite coffee cup with the slight chip, the tools they used for their hobbies, the scent in their clothes, and their ashes.

 

            After Ev died, I wanted to keep everything, and I mean everything, even her handwritten notes on containers in the freezer identifying food, and the to-do list on the board, with smiley faces indicating her preference for which tasks we should tackle next. I didn’t want to lose anything that reminded me of part of her personality, laughter, or sense of style. As the survivor, I became the gatekeeper of her life. 

 

Talking with Children About Grief

I was going to share a different post with you today, then yesterday I listened to the wonderful podcast of Christina Rasmussen talking with her two daughters, Elina and Isabel, about their father’s death 15 years ago when they were six and four. This kind of conversation doesn’t happen often enough.

 

Before I talk about this, I want to remind you that it’s important to pay attention when people say they are struggling to hold their thoughts together. Seven years ago today, we lost Robin Williams to suicide as he tried to cope with Lewy body dementia that brought depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations. You can read my post about that at: https://widowersgrief.blogspot.com/2019/08/lost-to-suicide.html

 

Like suicide, talking about grief should not be taboo. We should not feel ashamed when someone we love dies because then we will say nothing about it to others, and this is when we need their support. 

 

Widowed Fathers

I have read few books that speak honestly and in detail about being a widowed father. Compared to the number of grief memoirs written by women, there aren’t many written by men. There should be more of both.

 

A recent book by Donald Rosenstein and Justin Yopp is excellent—The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life. It shares the stories of men in a support group that met monthly and talked through their struggles of suddenly having to raise children as a solo parent. As they shared their insights and emotions, they helped each other navigate and survive their new challenge. 

 

Gothic Rock Grief: Nick Cave

“grief is also tidal. In time, it can recede and leave us with feelings of peace and advancement, only for it to wash back in with all its crushing hopelessness and sorrow. Back and forth it goes, but with each retreating drift of despair, we are left a little stronger, more resilient, more essential and better at our new life.” - Nick Cave

I hadn’t paid attention to musician Nick Cave until he was quoted in a recent Brain Pickings post by Maria Popova. He is a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and apparently that’s a post-punk or gothic-rock band.

Dancing With the Dwarfs of Grief

Elizabeth McCracken says that when tragedy comes, talk to the Dwarfs of Grief. 

McCracken had just given birth to a stillborn baby in a French hospital, and the midwife asked if she and her husband wanted to talk to a dwarf. Mistranslation. The midwife’s word was nun not dwarf (nonne vs nain). Edward thought it odd, but he also thought that speaking to a dwarf might cheer him up. They theorized that French hospitals in Bordeaux kept dwarfs in the basement for the worst-off patients. (I assume they are referring to the dwarfs of folklore, the mythical race of short, stocky creatures, along the lines of gnomes, trolls, elves and leprechauns.)

After the Funeral, There's the Quiet

            Today I’m thinking about Emily Rapp Black’s experience after her two-year-old infant son Ronan died, as well as about people I’ve loved who died in April — my wife Evelyn, John’s wife Anne, and Judy’s husband John. I hold them in my heart, along with those of you who also lost loved ones this month. Each year, this month of death makes us moody, sometimes snarly, especially when we think about what could have, should have, been.

The Worst Grief

Sometimes when we’re feeling bitten hard by grief, or just snarky, we try to prove that we are hurting the most, and that our grief is the worst that anyone has ever experienced. In the entire world. Ever.

I’ve lost a wife in her 40s, three beloved pets (well, one not so beloved), both parents (one to dementia), all my grandparents, a pair of in-laws, a friend to AIDS, two to murder, several to cancer, one to suicide, and a number of young friends to car accidents. As I walk among the tombstones in my personal cemetery, it would be hard to put them on a scale of the worst because they each hit me hard in different ways.

Like the Stars

Book: Light Of One Star, Anne Fischer Juhlmann

Anne Juhlmann has published the journal she kept of her daily life taking care of her two sons, Zach and Sam, who developed Mitochondrial Disease when they were young and died within a few years of each other. It’s a story of strength, heartbreak and love, and it will make you laugh, cry and hurt.

Anne’s book joins other moving accounts of parents writing about the death of their children, particularly Emily Rapp’s (Black) account of her son Ronan’s death to Tay-Sachs at age two (Still Point of the Turning World), and Elea Acheson’s blog posts and writings in the Huffington Post about her son Vasu dying of kidney cancer at age six.

Children Want the Truth

Book: Death Is Stupid, Anastasia Higginbotham

The things we don't tell our children about death can make them think there is a terrible force in the world waiting in the darkness to snatch them away, or worse, make them think that they killed grandma because of something they said.

Anastasia Higginbotham lays out the problem in her book — adults want the illusion; children want the truth.

The Reality of Finality

When grief comes, the world changes forever.

Commonalities of Grief

All grief is the same, and each grief is different.

If you haven’t experienced the death of someone close, you don’t know how devastating and pervasive grief is. It affects everything. It changes everything.

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *

Death of a Child

Book: Still Point of the Turning World, Emily Rapp

            Emily Rapp’s son Ronan died before his third birthday. I knew of Emily through one of her friends, so I won’t pretend to say that I understand what she feels or thinks about the loss of her child. I lost my wife early. There are similarities, but there are also significant differences.

            The cause of Ronan’s death was Tay-Sachs, a genetic defect that kills every baby born with it within the first four years of life. Over the months, the infants increasingly lose their ability to see, hear, feel, touch, move, and breathe. There is no treatment and no cure. Soon after Ronan was born, he began to die.