Children and Grieving

My three year old nephew Harry sat on my mums bed while she did the ironing. After a while he asked ‘where are nana’s clothes?’ noticing she was only ironing her own. ‘Doesn’t nana love you anymore?’ his little mind trying to make sense of why his grandfather didn’t live with us now. Finally he computed a solution: ‘lets get a ladder nanny then we can go ‘upstairs’ and bring nana back.’

Harry’s ‘let’s get a ladder and fetch nana back’ idea which has gone on for a few weeks came to a head yesterday as my mum told him ‘people who go upstairs to God don’t come back’, hearing this he went straight over to a wall painting depicting a religious figure and started hitting it repeatedly, a strong action for a little boy who isn’t known to be angry.

I wonder how difficult it must be for him as a small child to square the loss of his grandfather.