Sunday, October 11, 2009

October 9, 2009 Grieving Child

Ezra and I went to Windward for a dinner tonight. (Pallas was at a friends house and Langston flat out refused. It was not a battle worth fighting.) Ezra disappeared only moments after we arrived, knowing the campus better than many sophomores, and"hanging" with the junior and senior boys he know from several summers of sports camp at this school.

At dinner, I found him on sitting on the lap of one of the boys, child among bigger children. He looked content to be one of them but aware of the special status his smallness gave him.

We came home and Ezra began to cry. "I hate Windward! It reminds me of Daddy."

I sold Art's car this week. Pallas insisted I drive them to school and pick them up in his car the day before. She cried when I told her the man had come to get it. "The car being sold means Daddy is really gone."

Their grief surprises me. I am so deep in my own. They are so into their daily lives, seemingly well adjusted to the single parent household that I forget they are grieving too. "Children grieve differently" I was told.

I see all the things Art will miss in their lives. They don't know what's ahead of them so they have no clue what he will miss. It is only in a moment that they feel his loss. It is not all consuming like it is for me. Those moments are intense and full of despair, though.

I witness it and marvel at their ability to lose so deeply and then 237 seconds later ask "What are we having for dinner tonight?"

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