Grief expressed in lives and (children’s) books

[Names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.]

Ms. Wilson came in to the Library every day, and if I was in the building, I would print her coloring pages with the cartoon character Popeye on them. Sometimes she would tell me the story about why she loved Popeye and how her mother got her to eat spinach when she was a girl. She called me “Suzi ma friend,” and repeated that phrase a lot, even in one conversation. I don’t want to write the next words. She died. The other night, in her sleep, Ms. Wilson died.

Also — a coworker died, in late May. It’s been a long month, these days of late May/early June.

We thought our coworker, Demetri, was coming back after a long illness and were shocked to hear of his death. Our wise boss had a grief counselor come in to talk to us about Demetri’s passing, Thursday of last week. And Tuesday, while I was eating my lunch, someone came down to the kitchen and said, Ms. Wilson passed last night. I finished my lunch and went upstairs to the staff room where a few of us talked through our memories and passed around a Kleenex box. Ms. Wilson was a daily part of our lives, sassy to some, sweet to others. She was like another coworker, she was there

so much

so long

so every day

and she demanded our attention.

Missing her feels like a hole in my stomach.

A colleague suggested I write about what happened and look at some children’s books about death. I didn’t jump at the idea, but it perked me up. I opened our catalog and did some searching.

A Last Goodbye has a muted blue cover and the illustrations are sketched and painted, and then cut out to create three dimensional dioramas. The book is based on research about how animals express grief at the end of life. The book opens with the image of two elephants and the words, “When it comes time to say/our last goodbye,/I will wrap my trunk around you/and support you with my tusks.” But I didn’t even get to say goodbye, I think, as I start to tear up. I reach for a Kleenex.

Maybe Death is Stup*d is more my speed, I think, remembering another time I had skimmed its pages. The illustrations are a similar style to A Last Goodbye but brighter. Cut-outs of photographs and cut-outs of drawn and collaged figures, against a brown paper background, make this book look very real, all business in some ways, more stark. “It mostly doesn’t feel fair.” It’s not fair, I think, as I page through this book. Death is Stup*d melds informational text with the narrative of a young boy dealing with the death of his grandmother. 

The next book in my pile is The Pond, which gave me goosebumps when I read through it yesterday. The first thing I notice as I prepare to read it a second time is the endpapers: a vivid display of single-celled organisms that live in ponds, white drawings on a muted green gray background. I barely remember their names from long ago science classes. Cilia, flagellum, protozoa, are all words that come to mind, and these endpapers are…teeming. Not what one expects in the endpapers of a book about death. I check the back endpapers and find more complex lifeforms: beetles, frogs, dragonflies.

I open the book to the title page and already there’s more color: speckles of red with frog eggs, frogs, tadpoles, and maybe a newt. I can feel my breathing slow down like it does when I am in nature. I remember walking in the woods during the beginning of COVID and as I open this book I get that feeling of peace in the midst of something else. I have to say it: The Pond is such a special book. It has ducks and puddles and anger and crying and then a REAL POND with lily pads. It is a book about grief and a book about what happens when you move on. 

And eventually I will too.

Have you lost a coworker or a longtime patron? How did you work through the grief? Comment below.

---

Today’s guest blogger is Suzi Wackerbarth. Suzi is a children’s librarian for DC Public Libraries. She is also a former Bechtel Scholar (an ALSC sponsored fellowship) and has been a librarian since 2002.  

---

“Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.”