The Resiliency of Children
Seems a bit on the nose to talk about how difficult that first Christmas is without your spouse, so I’ll pivot in a more positive direction: I am in awe of my 3 year old daughter (to whom we’ll refer as E).
In the early days following Chelsea’s passing, folks spoke to me about the resiliency of children as an abstract concept, but my observations of E in the last two months have added a tremendous amount of depth to those abstract descriptions, giving me a lot of faith in our capacity to respond to challenges. This kid lost her mom 2 months ago and has barely skipped a beat in the time since. She clearly understands that her life is different, and I’m not yet convinced that she understands that mom isn’t coming back, but the way in which she’s just soldiered on through this experience gives me a lot of strength.
This will be E’s new normal, and I have no doubts she will live a very good life, albeit a different life from the one her mother and I intended. While it hurts like hell to think that that E will not remember her mom the way I do, E’s young age spares her some pain and trauma that she would have otherwise. My sense is that this experience would be a lot harder if E were 6 or 7.
In an earlier post, I spoke about how my current experience of grief involves holding seemingly contradictory emotions in my head/heart simultaneously: I’m heartbroken over Chelsea’s death, but I feel incredibly lucky to have known her for as long as I did. Same thing with E: I’m heartbroken that she won’t have an adult relationship with her mom, but I also know that her age grants her reprieve from pain. It’s awful that she lost her mom, but she had her mom for the three most important developmental years of her life (0–3). And we were lucky: through a combination of maternity leave, the lifestyle of a professor, and a research fellowship, Chelsea was around for a big chunk of E’s first three years. So E and Chelsea did have a relationship, an INCREDIBLY important relationship that gave E a foundation of trust and stability that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. I can see that stability in how E has responded to the shifting sands of the last two months: she’s rolling with the punches in precisely the sort of way Chelsea would have wanted her to.
I suspect that a lot of children have this resilient capacity and, fortunately, most of them don’t get tested with this magnitude of loss (although don’t get me started on the failures of how our modern world treats children…). But it has been a trying year for everyone, and I think a lot about what children have endured since Covid locked us down in March. My great hope is that the resiliency I’m seeing in E is common enough to help a generation of kids bounce back from a terrible 2020.
I’ll be happy to leave 2020 in my rear view when the clock turns this week. If I can muster even half of E’s resiliency as I move forward, I should be okay.
Here’s to greener pastures in 2021.
