Children’s Grief Awareness Day Teaches Us to Listen

Erin Callaway, CT

Today, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013, is Children’s Grief Awareness Day, a day of observance created by the Highmark Caring Foundation in Pennsylvania to remind adults that children of all ages, everywhere, face loss every day. 

The tragic deaths this year of three beloved kids in my community—Aliza Jean Herrick Stutzman, Dacano Arno, and Ella Belle Hope Dulac—underscore this sad reality. They also serve to remind us how much grieving children need our support.

One way adults can support grieving children is simply to listen intently, without judging or questioning. All of us, especially grieving kids, need to be heard. 

Children aren’t likely to pull up a chair and talk about their feelings. If they are really young, they might not even know what “grief” means. But if we give them permission to share their feelings on other occasions, we let them know that it’s okay to share the wide range of feelings they may have when someone dies.

The key is to let kids express grief in their own way, on their own terms, and in their own time frame. The challenge for caregivers is that children are likely to experience strong feelings when we least expect them to, like in the middle of a game. Conversely, they may carry on happily, playing outside during visiting hours at the funeral home. 

My good friend Cynthia, who brought her therapy dog Barkley to Ella’s elementary school to help the children there, experienced first hand the way kids faced with loss often behave. 

No sooner had the children settled into the library, where Barkley and Cynthia were waiting for them, when a little girl snuggled up to Cynthia and announced some very exciting news. 

“I learned how to tie my shoes!” she said, clearly delighted by her accomplishment. Cynthia looked at the girl and asked when she had learned her wonderful new skill. 

“This week,” the girl beamed.

Cynthia thanked her for sharing, and asked if she had anything more to say. She didn’t. During the rest of the visit, the kids talked about how they help take care of their own pets and what a dog’s ear looks like when it’s infected. Barkley and Cynthia led a parade through the library.

I asked Cynthia if any of the kids had mentioned Ella’s death. Her answer, after a pause: “No. Not one.”

We both knew that was perfectly okay.

The little girl learned what it feels like to have someone listen when you have something important to say. When she has a feeling about Ella, she will know that it’s okay to share that, too. 

More children than you can imagine are dealing with loss right now, and need someone to listen. According to the Children’s Grief Awareness Day website, one in 20 children will experience the death of a parent before they graduate from high school. Others will see grandparents, siblings, friends, beloved teachers, pets, and other important people in their lives die. Many more children will experience loss when Mom and Dad get divorced, a military parent is deployed, the family moves to a new city, or a special stuffed animal burns in a house fire.

As adults, we have the simple but critical job of remembering that kids don’t necessarily wear their grief on their sleeves. Whether a child needs to cry about a classmate’s death or spout glee over a success like tying her shoes, it’s important that we listen, and let her know that sharing feelings is okay. That’s the best support you can give any child. 

Having a Barkley by your side doesn’t hurt either.

Certified in Thanatology by the Association of Death Education and Counseling (ADEC), Erin Callaway helped to create Evergreen: The Pine Tree Hospice Center for Grieving Children and Adults in Dover-Foxcroft, ME. She is the author of “Let’s Stick Pencils Up Our Noses,” a 24-page children’s book about grief for ages 4-8, published by Four Square Press of Swampscott, Mass.

All I Need to Do

Earlier this week I sat with a child while he cried about his father who died six years ago. A few days later, I embraced a friend as she wept about her husband who died three days ago. 

Such different people. Such different stories. But for me, the listener, the observer, the intensity of the grief I saw before me with each of these people was just the same.

My mind wants to extract a lesson from this experience, to share it with you as a “teachable moment”. There is something you should learn from what I have just told you. But trying to figure out how to effectively convey that to you is giving me a headache. Which is why I realize that what I really need to do is just share what is in my heart.

You might want to know the stories of the child and the woman I mentioned. But I can’t tell you because I don’t know. The details are unimportant. All I know is that in each case someone died and in each case that someone was loved and is missed deeply. It hurts that these people are now gone. Six years ago, a few days ago – it makes no difference when they departed. Or how or where or as the result of what cause. The reality is they are gone and their absence hurts.

I can’t know exactly what that hurt is. Or how strong. Or what it looks like – anger? Sadness? Relief? If either the boy or the woman wanted to tell me, they would have. But they didn’t. And I didn’t ask.

I just was just there as they poured out their grief. Just a few minutes worth in each case, but that’s all that needed to come out. At that moment. Maybe there will be more. Maybe there won’t. I just know that in those particular moments, I was there. And that’s all I needed to do. 

The Ghosts Among Us

Grief is everywhere. Whether we are aware of it or not, the bereaved walk among us each day, every day, their hearts and spirits searing with an ache that we cannot see or know but that feels to them like the weight of a thousand bricks.

Some of them we do know-- those whose loss happened recently and is being talked about around town, at church, in the grocery store, at the office. And those whose loss we might be close to personally, close enough that even though the death might have occurred long since yesterday we know the griever still carries great pain. For these bereaved, we might even carry a pain of our own.

Then there are all the grievers whom we don't know. We haven't heard their story on the news. We aren't their friend, or acquaintance, coworker or neighbor. In a sense, to us in our unaware-ness, these are the bereaved who don't exist. They are living ghosts among us, visible to us physically but specters in their inner struggle to make their way through the corporeal world in which they must exist.

And they do exist. They exist with deep sorrow. Anger. Regret. Guilt. Confusion. Depression. Feelings upon feelings they hide behind masks worn to protect their own selves from their emotional turmoil. Masks they wear to protect all the people around them, the people they are sure--and often rightly so--do not want to know about their suffering. The people who, if they did know, would kindly want them, expect them, to "move on."

Many of us are afraid of ghosts. Even more of us are afraid of grief. Grief is painful. Sore. Hollow. And most frightening of all, grief will one day strike us. Better to turn away from grief when we hear of it lest we be reminded that inevitably we ourselves will one day be bereaved. That we, too, will become the ghosts that no one sees.

It's ok to be afraid of grief. But consider that even in fear there is a gift you can give to these unseen souls: be aware. Remember them. Know they are there. It will change the way you respond to the gruff clerk at the post office, the annoyed customer, the impatient support tech. These are so often the kinds of masks worn by the bereaved. Whether they speak of their grief to you is irrelevant. A simple kindness offered-- a smile, a friendly word--will let them know they are not forgotten.

Inspiration

You're probably wondering why my profile picture is a picture of a whale, so let me explain. It will tell you a lot about who I am and about KaKaw'in Consulting -- my Bereavement Consulting practice.

The picture you see is an image of Orca -- known to the First Nation People of the Pacific Northwest as KaKaw'in. According to native mythology, KaKaw'in is powerful animal totem--a spirit guide, if you will--and her story happens to be an incredible metaphor for my beliefs and understanding about working with the bereaved.

I first learned about KaKaw'in when my father returned from a trip he took to Vancouver in the summer of 2010. A few weeks after he got home, he sent me a necklace with a beautiful Orca pendant that he picked up at a museum on the last day of his vacation. Not one to buy stuff just for the sake of it, my dad told me when he saw the Orca necklace he felt that I just "had to have it".  I was moved by the gift and, of course, intrigued -- so I immediately hit the Web to find out what I could about what the Orca totem meant.

The story I found amazed me. So much about Orca -- her origin, her strengths, her gifts -- seemed to relate to all the things I had learned through my years of work as a Bereavement Support volunteer. Orca's understanding that we are all connected (and we are certainly bound by the human experience of grief); her knowledge that insights and emotions stuffed deep inside need release; the wisdom that we should not try to "fix" the suffering but we should be their companion; the healing power of presence -- I recognized all of these elements of Orca's story as the very principles that are at the core of my understanding about "helping" the bereaved. The coincidence was, to me, astounding.

What I realized this year (November 2011), in one of those unexpected moments of inner clarity, was that my father's gift, the story behind it, and the parallels with my experience was not a coincidence at all. He and I have long acknowledge that we share a deep spiritual connection. I now believe--I know--that when he "felt" that he had to give me the Orca necklace, it was because on some level he knew that it would be meaningful to me, even if he could not explain what that meaning might be. In fact, it had far greater meaning than he could have known. That necklace was a symbolic key that opened a door between my mind and my heart. And it was in opening that door that I was able to connect with my life's passion and purpose -- my inspiration.

You see, spending time with the bereaved is not just something that I like to do, it's something that I MUST do. I can't NOT do it. It's my calling. My gift. I can't ignore it.

Not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer or a musician or a CPA. Certainly not me! Just the same, not everyone can be comfortable in the presence of someone who is pouring out their emotional pain--especially when that pain is because of death. Not everyone can shut off the noise in their mind so they can truly "hear" another. But I can. More than that, I am thoroughly, completely, utterly inspired to do so. We all grieve. We all need to be heard. I am called to be a listener to the bereaved, to be a witness to their work and their being. I am, like KaKaw'in, the companion that hears the pain, but doesn't try to take it away because I know that from the pain comes the healing, the growing, and the wisdom that no one person can ever give to another. 

KaKaw'in is my guide and my inspiration. May I someday have the honor of being yours.

-- Erin