The loss of a loved one is never easy.  Espe­cially for kids.  Kids don’t always know how to show or explain how they are feel­ing about griev­ing or sor­row.  It could be behav­ior changes that you notice, it could be vis­i­ble sad­ness, it could be laugh­ter, really, any­thing.  That’s how I observed (and still observ­ing) my kids deal­ing with the loss of their grand­fa­ther (my father).

The kids called him Grandpa G., I called him Dad, friends & fam­ily called him Gary or just “G”.

Dad lost his bat­tle with can­cer on Novem­ber 9, 2011.  His offi­cial diag­no­sis of esophageal can­cer was only a cou­ple of weeks ear­lier.  The can­cer took over his body and he didn’t stand a chance.  For more infor­ma­tion about this, visit, http://garymelchi.com.

We sat the kids down at home and told them we had some­thing to dis­cuss with them.  Sam imme­di­ately said “Did G die?”  We said, “Yes Sam, Grandpa G. is in heaven now.”.  Sam didn’t react in the way you’d expect.  He had a somber look on his face for a moment, but then gave me a big hug and went about his nor­mal rou­tine of play­ing with toys.  He was hav­ing fun and laugh­ing min­utes after the news.  Lizzy was just lis­ten­ing and didn’t say much about the news.

As the days progress, we’re notic­ing small behav­iors that lead us to believe that Sam was really affected by Grandpa G’s pass­ing.  Sam wears Grandpa’s Colts hat pretty much when­ever he is at home.  Grandpa’s Colt’s jer­sey is in Sam’s bed.  When Sam leaves the house, he takes the Colts hat off and puts on Grandpa’s rac­ing ball-cap.  There have been a few days at school where Sam has acted out.  In talk­ing with his teacher, Sam’s behav­ior at school has been good, with the excep­tion of a cou­ple of days.  In talk­ing to Sam about his behav­ior at school, he told me he was just sad and didn’t really know what he was doing.  We talked about why he’s sad and worked through why Grandpa is in heaven now.  I think he under­stands what hap­pened as best we can explain it to a 5-year-old with­out get­ting into the actual can­cer details.

One of the things Grandpa G. left behind was an older, small-sized pick-up truck.  Sam and Lizzy have always loved this truck.  They love dri­ving around in the truck.  Sam requests to be dropped off/picked up from school in the truck.  The truck isn’t in the best shape and has it’s share of mechan­i­cal issues, but none of that mat­ters to the kids.  It’s G’s lit­tle red truck!

The morn­ing after the funeral ser­vices, Sam grabbed a DVD copy of the photo slideshow, popped it in and was watch­ing it for about an hour by him­self.  He was curled up on the couch, under a blan­ket, watch­ing the pho­tos fly by and lis­ten­ing to the music I put on the slideshow.  The music was orig­i­nal music my dad made in the 70′s and 80′s.  It was the cutest thing to see, very touch­ing.  He was mad when we had to turn it off to start our day.

It’s cur­rently Novem­ber 23, 2011 and it’s been almost 2 weeks since Grandpa G. passed and it seems like the kids are deal­ing with the loss bet­ter and bet­ter each day.  Over the last cou­ple years, Sam and Dad grew very close.  I have no doubt that Sam will remem­ber Grandpa G. in all his hilar­i­ous details.  I think Lizzy will remem­ber him being really funny and hav­ing fun with him, but prob­a­bly not to the extent that Sam will.  She’s still pretty young.  Luck­ily, we took lots of pho­tos and many videos to help both kids remem­ber their grandpa better.