Last year, my daughter Giulia—fourteen, with Down syndrome—lost her grandfather, to whom she was very close. I worried it would be hard to explain his death to her, but in the end she took it quite naturally. We spoke to her simply and didn't hide anything. We told her that her grandfather wouldn't be here on earth anymore, but that he was happy "up there."
Yet at the funeral itself, Giulia didn't seem to grasp what was happening. I think she froze in the face of our emotions—and her brothers' and sisters' tears. We didn't hide our grief. We all cried together.
What really troubled her, though, was that they could put Grandfather's body in a coffin. She kept saying: "How could he fit in that box?" On the way home from the service, I watched her stretch out on the sofa with her arms pressed tight against her sides, and she said: "I'm practicing to see if I can fit in the box." We all laughed.
—2010, by Sophie Cluzel, translated from Ombres et Lumière no. 177
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