Grief and Loss Through the Eyes of a Child

Carol Adler's novel is a story of love, endurance, and strength that not many would expect out of an adolescent faced with the death of a parent. At the same time, it offers a telling contrast on how adults and children deal with such a loss, and in this regard offers a strong lesson on how to teach children between the ages of 11 and 13 about loss and bereavement. Another of the book's strengths is that it offers a contrast between the grieving process of two children - an adolescent girl and an even younger boy, her brother.

The fairly normal weekend evening in her home in suburban Hammond for an 11-year-old Jessica is turned upside down when her father goes out to get ice cream and is hit by a car. The news of the loss hits all the family members differently. Jessica's mother is reduced to hysterics, ineffectively consoled by Alan, a friend of the family. Jessica simply refuses to believe that her father is dead, thinking that he is playing a trick on them. Her younger brother Tycho is less certain; the adults tell him that his father was hit by a car and is now dead, but his older sister is too much of an authority figure for him to dismiss her opinion out of hand.

For Jessica, accepting her father's death is simply not an option. It defies logic - "he is too big to be hit by a car" - and goes against the natural order of things - the presence of her father is "like air, like sunshine." She stubbornly insists that her father is not dead and gets angry with anyone who suggests otherwise. The bulk of her anger is directed at her mother, although the reasons for this anger lie deeper than their different approaches to coping with the loss of a husband and a father. There is resentment at her mother's lack of attention due to the her preoccupation with her job even after she got home; at her not considering Jessica's interests when deciding to move the family out of their old house in a more wooded area - the one Jessica loved - to a larger but more suburban house about one-hour drive away; and at a host of small deceptions, something an adult would perceive as a 'white lie', which to Jessica make her mother a person not to be trusted.

In the time between her father' death and the day of the funeral, Jessica's anger spills from her mother and onto the rest of the adults arriving at the house to pay their condolences. All of them think that her father is dead, and all of them are trying to convince her of it, even though she herself fervently believes otherwise. Jessica is equally resentful of them for pulling her repeatedly out of her frequent reveries in which she descends throughout the day. These reveries are brought about by Jessica encountering some everyday situation in which her father has figured prominently, at which point she descends into a daydream in which her father is still around and present in these particular situations.

Things do not improve after the funeral. Tired and enraged by her mother's insistence that she must accept her father's death and in the process get closer to her mother to "help each other," Jessica decides to take Tycho with her on a trip to their old house where she believes their father is hiding from them in his old "climbing tree" - a huge beech tree growing on their old property. Arriving at the tree and not finding her father, Jessica decides to climb it and vows not to stop until she finds her father, even if it means climbing to the very top. Tycho, combining in himself the deep trust in his sister and the level of pragmatism incredible for a six-year-old, tries to dissuade her and ultimately promises to wait for Jessica's return at the foot of the tree.

The climb is physically draining, but the higher Jessica climbs the clearer it becomes to her that her father is truly gone. She arrives at her catharsis when she gets to the top without finding her father anywhere. The book concludes with Jessica, her thoughts not on Tycho and her mother, is on her way down from the tree.

The book represents strong teaching material about dealing with loss and about the grieving process for children ages nine and up. Even though the main character of the book, Jessica, is eleven, the presence of Tycho as a fairly strongly developed character is what makes this book suitable for a somewhat younger audience than children of Jessica's age. Tycho may not have the grasp of the abstracts sufficient enough to understand the terrible finality of death, but his practical perception of the world is strong enough to move him past denial and into coping faster than his older sister. The presence of Tycho and his interactions with Jessica also underscore the importance of sibling support for the effective grieving process; sometimes when children struggle to interact with adults as a result of a loss, they can interact with and relate to one another considerably better.

The various ways in which characters in the book deal with their grief is also a reminder to teachers that loss and bereavement are part of an acutely personal experience, and there are no standardized timetables or intensity-of-feeling charts to be used when talking to students about grief, loss, and bereavement in a classroom. Simply put, there are no correct or incorrect ways to mourn; everyone does it in their own way and at their own pace. At the same time, the author emphasizes through the portrayal of Jessica's emotional journey that feelings associated with grief and mourning cannot and should not be bottled up. Accepting loss and coming to grips with it are an important part of getting one's life back on track later on.