The pain that comes with unexpectedly losing your relationship with a child
Any kind of grief is incredibly difficult to write about — putting words to paper makes everything that much more real. My wife and I recently “lost” two little girls — they’re still very much alive, but we’re no longer part of their lives. Victoria, my wife, was their nanny.
My step-mom stepped in after my mom died and helped me find my life again
I never expected to call anyone my step-mom. To have a step-mom means your dad got divorced and he remarried or his wife died. In my case, it was the latter. My mom died when I was nineteen, meaning that my dad would likely remarry at some point. About two years after my mom’s death he met a woman who would become my step-mom. Two years may sound like a long time, but in “grief time” it might as well have been two months. Is anybody truly ever ready to accept the person who might try to replace her mom?
Books that explain death and loss to kids
I wasn’t really cruising for a kid’s book about death and/or loss when I found City Dog, Country Frog at our library — honestly, Jasper’s just so into dogs and frogs and any kind of animal that all it took was a quick glance at the cover and I was sold. I really had no idea what the content of the book was until our first read-through.
Everybody deals with death differently: my advice for how to talk to those of us who’ve lost a child
At the dentist, getting my nails done, meeting new people, often times the fact that I have a son who has passed away (how’s that one sound?) ends up coming up in the conversation. I worry about it often because it’s not something most people are prepared to handle talking about. Should you be overly sympathetic? Ignore it?