“How does she tell their 2 year old that her father died?”
That was the question posed to me at 5:00 this morning. I was stumped. How do you explain something like death to a 2 year old? It’s my worst fear, not that I will die, but that someone will have to explain it to my daughter and she won’t be able to understand why I don’t come back to her.
It’s been haunting me all morning.
I pray that someone would tell her every day how much I love her. Tell her that I didn’t want to leave her. Tell her it’s okay to be sad or mad and it will also be okay to laugh again some day. I love to hear her laugh.
But it’s not about me right now, it’s about this family. And all I can say is, “Hold her close. Be honest. Help her grieve and remember. And let her lead you back to wholeness in the way only a child can do.”
Love Sorrow
Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,
what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so
utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment
by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,
as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.
Mary Oliver
Red Bird
