Breaking the news

I know thing have been heavy here lately on our blog, but reality is that our life is heavy. Please don't everyone read to much into the last few posts, that is grief. It is all over the place and its not necessarily always pretty or rational, but I'm not going to pretend that its not real.

This last week we told our boys that Grandma will not be getting better. It was hard...I don't really think there are words to describe it.


We did it over decorating cupcakes so that it didn't seem like such a serious "talk" and they seemed more interested in the sprinkles than in the conversation. But Caleb said it best, dying isn't scary." No, I told him its not you are are right, but that doesn't mean that it still wont be hard.

As the days have gone by I have watched it sink in. Mostly on Caleb. He talks a lot about taking care of Grandma and yesterday he pretended to be sick at school for the first time. I asked him what was really wrong and he said, "I'm just so sad about Grandma." I told him I understood I was sad too but that doesn't mean we can stop doing the things we are suppose to. Grandma would not want that. He headed back to class and then over an afternoon snack he told me he didn't want Grandma to die and I held him and told him I didn't either. We had a good cry holding onto each other.

His school is no stranger with grief. Last year one of the teachers died and her Granddaughters attended the school. There are also two girls who have a Father who is dying. They have a counselor there and she is going to start calling Caleb in every few weeks to check in with him and evaluate how he is doing and working with him. I'm glad we have a resource for him and especially one who has some experience with this.

Even though its hard, I'm glad its in the open. I was afraid they would hear me mention it on the phone and they wouldn't understand and just internalize it. Its hard to deal with it, but I think its harder to not deal with it.

Life is not easy, and while I don't want to make it harder on my boys I want them to learn resilience and develop the ability to cope with tragedy. That's what Grandma would do. She deals with life head on and is not afraid of anything. She taught us the same things growing up and she never sheltered us from hard things and it made us strong adults.

It would have been nice to start an a slightly smaller scale with my boys though :) This could be one of the hardest trials for them, almost like losing a parent. Grandma has never taken her duties as a Grandma to love, spoil, and play lightly. Not only that but Grandma worked hard to be sure each of them made it to this life safely and cared for the other boys when I could not. She gave me life, and she gave them life. That is a gift. Love.

These boys adore their Grandma Silly!