Children and grief

I was twelve when my brother-in-law, Larry, died. I was not allowed to go to the funeral. He was like a brother to me and nobody talked to me very much about his death. For years I was haunted by a sense of unreality and yearning for him to “come home”. I still have the story about his death, which I started to write in middle school. Back then I desperately needed to make his death real. I tried so hard. My schoolwork suffered. I had dreams of him and all the while there was this sense that I was not allowed to talk about it. I was just a kid. While lying in bed at night I thought I could visualize his face floating in my room, keeping a loving eye on me, and thought maybe he was asking me to help comfort my sister.

Years later when I was a teenager and my maternal grandmother died, I made sure I went to her funeral and saw her in the open casket. I realize that when parents and guardians are also grieving, they try to do what is best for children but sometimes they forget that a child can suffer deeply too. That is a topic for another book but I bring it up here to make you aware that children have needs too.

Melanie Hack
author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
The unsolved mystery of the death of Cindy James