“What are you doing?”
I was walking past the open door of what had been the new nursery when I saw her. My two-year-old daughter Ava was sitting in a big cardboard box on the floor holding the small pewter heart that contained the ashes of her little sister.
“Hello noodle. What are you doing?” I asked again.
“Am sailing,” she said as though it was perfectly obvious. “With Georgie.”
A year on and Ava still talks about Georgie on a nearly daily basis. Sometimes she tells me that her stillborn sister is an angel fairy. Other days that Georgie “ran away”. What I do know is that even at two years old (which is how old Ava was when her sister died), Ava knew something had happened. Her little sister’s death had formed a crack in Ava’s snowdome world.
This month’s First Wednesday Club charity is close to my heart: it’s the National Centre for Childhood Grief. The NCGG provides support and guidance to children who are grieving the death of a parent or sibling.
For so long it seems that the attitude towards children’s psychological needs (when faced with death) has been, “Just don’t mention it. Kids are resilient. They’ll be okay.”
But evidence shows that often they’re not. According to the NCCG, grief can leave such heavy and unnecessary scars, capable of affecting all aspects of a grieving child’s life. For example, their physical health, academic performance, social behaviour, the ability to form and sustain intimate relationships, and their beliefs about life and living. Kids often adopt “negative” coping strategies. Just like adults, I guess.
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I wish I knew about this last year when my husband was killed in a car crash and my kids and I were wading through the darkest, most bewildering grief. My son was 5 years old and a very angry little boy; my daughter was 7 and desperately sad.
We are doing better 615 days later ... but it is just so hard. ...and nobody really understands that there is furious paddling beneath the surface allowing us to function at all.
I wish such a group had existed when i lost my mother at 14 after 7 years of cancer. I am 55 and things were so different then. I recommend "Motherless Daughters" by Hope Edelman for other women who have experienced this. I was wary of reading it as my grief is still strong and it comes back more strongly at certain stages of your life. However, it did help. When I had my own children, I longed for my mother and to have someone to do the most basic things like shop with. I feel the tears welling up even now. You never get over these things. Any help available can only be a good thing.