Musings on a Life Quite Ordinary

As adults, we understand death is an inevitable and natural part of life.  Obviously, it doesn't make dealing with it any easier, but when your family loses someone integral and important, a person who has been in your childrens lives for their whole lives, it doesn't seem so natural anymore.  Telling your children that their loved one they adore is dead has got to be one of the most gut wrenching and awful things you have to do as a parent. Explaining there are no more chances to chat, cuddle, learn from that person or just phone them up to see how they're doing feels wrong in every way.  Death feels even more unfair when you have to explain it to a child. Their ability to live in the moment is obviously a wonderful gift but perhaps also a clever coping mechanism for a child faced with the reality of mortality.  If you could get a little respite from grief in the wonder of a box full of toys, building a fort from cushions and duvets or bashing some pots ...

  When I gave birth to my first child, my grandmother brought me a box of dark chocolates called Black Magic; she told me I would need them to replenish my strength.   I laughed, but in the middle of the night in the hospital, while I struggled to feed my tiny baby girl, I reached for those chocolates and I can still remember how amazing they tasted.   I brought the last of them home and kept them in the fridge just for me.   A few years later when it became clear she needed help; my Granny went to live in a nursing home.   It was a lovely place, the staff kind and caring, but it was still hard.   Visits with her could be difficult; she just wanted to go home. A few months on and one day I brought her a box of Black Magic, her face lit up, she scoffed most of the box before we left her.   It became our thing.   I would bring her Black Magic, my kids who would have been watching the box in the house for days would get to eat some too. ...