Nobody teaches you what to do when someone you love loses someone they love. You want to show up. You know flowers will die in a week. You don’t want to send another fruit basket. You don’t want to say the wrong thing, so you say nothing, and then you feel terrible about that too. I have been there. Most of us have.
That’s not the reaction she was expecting. My daughter came home, and I could tell something was weighing on her. She’s eight, and she doesn’t hide things well, and I’ve learned to read the specific kind of quiet that means she needs to say something but doesn’t know how to start.
Nobody tells you this part. You sign them up for the sleep-away camp, the sports program, the art intensive, the all-day-every-day enrichment schedule that is supposed to give them the best summer of their lives. You spend more than you probably should. You tell yourself it’s an investment in their childhood, their memories, their development.