When I became a teacher, I had no idea how present grief is in the classroom. Over the years, I have had many conversations with students after a shocking loss in the community. It never gets easier, bringing that heaviness into a place that is so often filled with laughter and silliness.
My relationship with grief has changed dramatically since losing Reed. I no longer view grief as the enemy. An unwanted guest, absolutely. But over time, you grow comfortable with it. You learn to accept grief for what she is. You don’t always appreciate her presence, but she becomes a friend. A companion, if an unpredictable and sometimes hated one.
Like most important topics, I also no longer believe people should wait until they are drowning in the midst of new grief to begin learning about it. This is why I follow grief accounts, why I write about it myself, even though it is no longer the most overwhelming piece of my life. I do it because it is so much easier to understand when you approach it with a clear head. Then, when you find the biting cold fingers of grief unexpectedly tearing at your skin, you already have words and ideas to lean back on. When the waves of grief threaten to overpower me, I can remember things I have read and learned in my clear-headed moments, and I can find reason and comfort more easily.
For this reason, I have become very conscious of opportunities to discuss grief with my students. It has surprised me how often the issue arises in children’s literature. This year alone, I've been surprised to find my class reading books in which characters lose parents, parents lose children, and children lose beloved pets. Each author handles it differently, and not always in the way I would like them to. But it opens the door for meaningful conversations about a topic that will inevitably be relevant to everyone, and unfortunately is already too close to home for many.
When these grief events arise in the books we are reading, they lead to some of the most valuable discussions we have as a class. The most important thing I want people to understand about grief is that there is no “right” way. Timelines, reactions, emotions...they are unique to everyone. As a society we tend to expect certain things from our grievers, and those expectations are almost always misplaced.
In these moments, I ask students…
What do you notice about how this character is reacting to their loss?
Does anything surprise you about their reaction?
Then, we discuss how, even though some reactions are different from what we might expect, there is nothing wrong with that. We brainstorm different ways the character’s might be feeling about their loss, and generally come to some sort of understanding about why they may have reacted in a surprising way. It is remarkable to me how quickly children begin to empathize with characters they would otherwise dislike or dismiss when they begin to see the loss through a different perspective.
In Where the Red Fern Grows, for example, a young boy from a fairly unlikable family dies in a hunting accident. The narrator describes how the boy’s family stays to themselves afterwards, and how they never once cry. The students are surprised by this reaction, but through discussion, begin to see it differently. They offer suggestions of how shocked the parents might be, how they never really felt accepted by the community and therefore keep their grief to themselves. They say nothing disparaging or dismissive, but instead come to an understanding that, although they might behave differently, this family still clearly loves their son and is rocked by the loss.
At the end of the story, when we read about the heartbreaking death of the two dogs, again we see a multitude of reactions from the characters. The father insists his son should forget about the dogs entirely, while the mother is so distraught at seeing her boy’s sadness that he ends up comforting her in his moment of grief. Through it all, though, the main character has confidence in his grief process. He recognizes his grief as love, accepts all his feelings as valid, and patiently helps his parents understand how important it is for him to grieve. Again, as we read this section, the students have remarkable discussions. They share who they agree or disagree with, and make connections to their own loss stories. Where the Red Fern Grows has always been one of my very favorite books, but now I love it for another reason - its honest portrayal of the many layers of grief, and the opportunities it offers to help children understand different responses to loss.
I don’t believe this book is a perfect example of grief - there are many elements in how it is addressed that I don’t agree with. What I love about it is the opportunities it provides for deeper discussion. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of books to help address heavy topics with children, and especially when they allow you to bring those topics into everyday conversation, rather than just waiting until the moment it becomes relevant and overwhelming. I thought about some of the other children’s books that touch on grief in a way that could encourage discussion, and I was surprised at how easy it was to come up with examples. Charlotte’s Web, Bridge to Terabithia, Mick Harte was Here, or the young adult book The Chaos of Standing Still all tackle grief not as a passing moment, but as a concept the characters really have to wrestle with. To me, that makes these books so much more valuable for the conversation than ones like Harry Potter in which we never get to see the complicated process the characters have to face as they struggle to make sense of and adjust to their loss.
I encourage you, parents and teachers, when you come across books and stories dealing with death and grief, don’t shy away from those conversations. They are difficult, certainly, but it is in these everyday moments that we can begin to have open, honest conversations about these topics with children. And, as we see in Where the Red Fern Grows….there is an awful lot we can learn from listening to what our children have to say about these topics, too.
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