Or, or, do wood working! You could make bookshelves. Like, umm, making things! You know, you could” - my brain was racing - “knit sweaters. The emotions were real.Īnd then, despite my years of experience as a hospice chaplain, despite my own experiences of grief, despite everything I knew intellectually, emotionally, professionally, spiritually and personally about love and loss - despite all of that, I looked at my weeping child and actually said this: “Well, you know Mary Bear, when kids stop playing pretend, they start doing other fun things. It doesn’t really work to say that those relationships were only imaginary. She was grieving, wailing for the loss of dozens of friends she loved. “They won’t come back, will they? I already know it.” She began to rock back and forth. “But am I never going to play with them again?” Her breathing grew ragged. She had documented not only each animal’s name, age and hometown, but what foods they liked, what scared them, what they loved. When they were students, each had a report card as soldiers, they each had a “Top Secret” file enumerating their strengths and weaknesses in battle. When they were patients in her clinic, suffering from injuries she treated with our first-aid kit, each had a medical chart. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.” She began to sob. And nothing I do will bring them back to life.
They used to come alive, and now they don’t. “Because I don’t know how to play with them anymore.” Her face puckered, and then she said in her typically precocious way, “I know you thought they were just stuffies, but they weren’t. “You don’t have to give them all away,” I said. By the second bag, tears were trickling down her cheeks. She carefully examined each animal, stroked each creature’s matted fur, held them up to her nose and breathed in deeply before putting them into the bag.
I went into the kitchen and came back with a box of trash bags.
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