Essaying While at a Loss

We have been at a loss this fall. Actually we have been at many.

We’ve experienced breath-snatching news. Staggering. The kinds of tragedies the human mind denies entry, bolts every lock, tips a chair under the knob. It screams there’s no way you can fit in here.

But tragedy is a relentless intruder. And too strong. It gets in. And once inside there’s no room that can contain it, no place it might comfortably sit. It ricochets around, bouncing off walls, upsetting every neighbor below, the joints, the stomach, the heart. It opens the back door so grief can just walk right in and live here now.

Amidst all this loss, we have had to explain death to our youngest. To date, we had kept life’s worst secret, allowing him to believe in a bright, sunny world of unending good outcomes. Now, unavoidably, we must lead him out of the dark, into the dark.

Given my son’s different understanding of the world, I text his speech therapist for advice on how to talk about death and dying. She has known him for a decade. She worked with him as he was gaining words, before his brain got derailed. She worked with him as he was losing words, epilepsy feasting on all his ideas and thoughts.

For years, she sat beside him on our basement couch, he slumped onto her as they read, as she tried to untangle his tongue, help his…