My two year old daughter Aine recently experienced, what was to her, a great loss. A loss that she has had some difficulty coming to terms with. She lost two of her favorite toys to the abyss. On the day of Halloween, she managed to remove the air vent in her room, and although the events that followed are sketchy, two of her beloved Cars, “Blue car” and “Orange car” fell into the duct work. Molly, my wife, heard the sound as they fell down to the basement level.
That night, before putting Aine to bed, I went to the basement to see if it would be possible to access the part of the duct that the cars came to rest in, but as I am no Bob Vila, I decided I would not risk pulling apart a system of duct work that I was not so sure I could reassemble. Blue car and orange car were effectively gone.
Since it was Halloween, we had managed to distract the girls with trick or treating (we hit about 20 houses before they were tuckered out), and the subject of the lost cars did not come up until bedtime. And then Aine was distraught.
“Blue CAAAAARRRR!” [She did not seem as upset over Orange Car’s passing]
“I’m sorry, honey,” I tried to console her, “Blue Car is gone.”
This was met with hollering and yelling. Aine went to the air vent, pulled off the air vent cover again and began yelling into the duct: “Blue CAAAARRRRR!”
I put the cover over the vent and walked down to the basement to see if I could fashion a rescue device with a magnet and rope. I found a magnet and some suitable thin rope [I came to find later that this would not work since the magnet stuck to the side of the duct-work like a, well, like a magnet], but before I could begin to craft my rescue rope, I heard a clattering through the ductwork, like the sound of a two year old taking the cover off of the vent in her room. I then heard, amplified through the air vent: “Blue CAAARRRRR!!!”
I went back upstairs. This time I put a heavy plastic dresser on either side of the air vent so that Aine could no longer remove it. She made her anguish known. I tried to comfort her with the offer of a story. She yelled and mourned for Blue Car. I decided to give her a few minutes.
When I returned, she was calm. We read a story and she went to bed.
Two nights later, Sylvie, our four year old, was at gymnastics class with momma. Aine and I began our usual routine, watching an eight minute episode of a computer animated cartoon show eight times in a row. Aine is fond of watching this particular show while Sylvie is at dance class because Sylvie does not like to watch it anymore. Moreover, it is a cartoon about one of her favorite subjects: racing cars. And naturally, it reminded her of Blue Car. But this time, she was not as distraught.
“Where Blue Car, Daddy?”
“Oh, honey, Blue Car is gone.”
“Oh no, Blue Car gone! Where Blue Car go?”
“Blue Car has gone away.”
“Ooooooh, Blue Car gone.”
We repeated this exchange several times.
It was as though she had to repeat it over and over again for her to come to grips with a new reality: a life with no Blue Car. [To be sure, we could have just bought another overpriced blue checkout-line car. But we were trying to teach a lesson about NOT dropping things down the air vent – don’t worry though, Blue Car was survived by Red Car, and recent arrival, Purple Car].
I am sure it is not the last time we will stop to remember Blue Car. Aine’s grieving process reminded me of Sylvie’s loss of her pacifier. Ok, true enough, she did not “lose” pacifier. Instead, I announced to her one night at bedtime that she was not going to have pacifier (or “yummy”, as she called it) any more.
Just as Aine had to repeat repeatedly that Blue Car was gone, Sylvie also took a while [several hours] to come to grips with her new reality: a life with no “yummy”.
“Sylvie,” I said, “you are a big girl. It is time for no more yummy.”
“But, I can have a new yummy.”
“No honey, no more yummys.”
“But, we can go to the store and get a new yummy.”
“No, honey, no more yummys.”
“But, Gramma can give me a yummy…”
I was in Sylvie’s room for hours that night discussing this with her. By the end, she seemed to be at peace with it. The topic came up a few times after that, but Sylvie had no yummy relapses. And, we learned our lesson; we took Aine’s yummy away much sooner, before she could try to talk her way around it.
Thinking about Aine’s loss of Blue Car also got me thinking about the losses in my life, and how, as we get older, we do not always talk or cry through our grief quite as well as kids do.
I remember back to how I expressed my grief for my Grandfather, who died when I was in my second year of college. I cried quietly when I got the call. I cried quietly while Molly comforted me in her arms that night. I cried quietly, and alone, now and again: like when a holiday phone call from his wife brought memories and sadness to the surface; or when I climbed into the car he gave me and the smell of the upholstery in the hot summer sun reminded me of the time he tried to teach me to drive the car with it’s manual transmission; when my grandmother expressed her sadness that they had divorced, and shared with me that she still loved him and had long hoped for reconciliation. But I never really shared that grief with anyone. I never spoke it, I never worked through it aloud and I always made sure to hide my tears from others.
I did work through a lot of that grief over time, but on my own, as I have done with other less weighty periods of grieving in my life. But as I watched Aine ask again and again about her Blue Car, and noticed that she seemed more and more comforted as we repeated together again and again that Blue car was gone, I was touched by the potential for healing that can come from sharing your grief and working through it with the support of your loved ones.I know it is just a toy car that led to all this “philosophizing”, but it was Aine’s “Blue Car”, and that means a lot to a two year old.
