My husband suffered a heart attack during a business trip abroad. He was 53. Nothing had prepared us for losing him so soon. When I told Charles what had happened, I started by saying something very serious had occurred. He answered immediately: "Mom, Dad is dead." His intuition stunned me. When I confirmed it, he asked anxiously: "Who will take me to the pool on Saturday?" Then he ran to his room and didn't come out until evening.
I don't know if Charles understood that his father's death was irreversible. At first, he seemed to react by thinking about the immediate consequences of his absence—not about the future.
That made it hard to explain to him, and to his sister, how his father had died so suddenly. I only said: "Dad's heart was sick, and he died at a restaurant while eating with a coworker." I never imagined Charles would connect the restaurant, and eating itself, with his father's death.
In the weeks and months that followed, he would freeze at the dinner table and refuse to eat anything but pasta—lunch and dinner alike.
Later he asked me: "What if you die, Mom? What will happen?"
He was terrified of being abandoned. He seemed anxious about the future, and I could see he was absorbing my own distress. That pushed me to ask other people to help care for him, so he wouldn't be so crushed by my worries and fears.
Family, friends, people from our parish—they all stepped in. They offered to pick Charles up some afternoons, take him to the pool every Saturday morning, get him out of the house. They gave me space to rest. Those months were brutal. From the day his father died, Charles refused to wash, to dress, to go to school. He hid under the table and wouldn't leave the house—his refuge, as if he were terrified of the world outside. He regressed badly. At first I tried to force him out, but I was exhausted myself. I finally stopped and accepted what I should have seen clearly: given what he'd been through, I had to accept his depression—it was temporary, natural. His father's death had shattered every landmark Charles relied on. He needed time to trust again. With help from friends and his psychologist at the mental health clinic, who structured therapy around his grief, Charles slowly came out of his shell. He started enjoying his regular activities again. But it took no less than two years.
One very good thing happened: Charles talked about his dad almost every day.
Completely naturally, he kept his father present. He'd say good morning to his photo as he passed it, explaining: "My dad died. I think about him. We used to go to the pool together…"
I was so locked in my own grief that I couldn't be as natural as he was. I couldn't approach it so easily. In a way, hearing my husband spoken of so simply did me good—my own reserve wouldn't let me.
Anne Ortiz, 2010
Why Did They Put Grandpa in a Box?
Last year my daughter Giulia, who is 14 and has Down syndrome, lost her grandfather, to whom she was very close. It seemed terribly difficult to explain his death to her, but she took it in a very natural way. We spoke to her simply, hiding nothing. We told her that Grandfather would no longer be here on earth, but that he was happy "up there."
At the funeral, though, Giulia didn't really grasp what was happening. I think she froze in the face of our emotions and those of her brothers and sisters, who were crying. We didn't hide our grief. We all cried together.
What really troubled her was that Grandfather's body had to go in a coffin. She kept saying over and over: "He can't fit in that box! It's impossible!" On the way home from Mass, I saw her lie down on the sofa with her arms pressed tight to her sides. She said: "I'm practicing to see if I can fit in the box." We all laughed.
Sophie Cluzel
