I’m going to depart from my usual topic of parenting challenging children to an equally large challenge we’ve been experiencing…parenting a teenager whose friends’ parents have died. As odd as it seems to us, two of our 15-year-old’s friends have lost one of their parents in the last two weeks and a third one has a father hospitalized with cancer. And only a couple short months ago one of KayKay’s friends was diagnosed with leukemia and is currently in a fight of her own.

It’s a grim reality that I don’t remember experiencing as a high schooler…that parents in the mid-40s can die or teens could get such serious illnesses. I knew it happened…but it didn’t happen in my world. And KayKay, being the strong and mature teen she is…well it’s a lesson I wish I could shield her from, but sadly that is not the case.

Two weekends ago the stepfather of her dear friend (and homecoming date) died suddenly. It has been an incredibly awful experience just as their extended friends, so there’s no way of comprehending what these teenagers are actually experiencing. But I watched in awesome admiration as my KayKay carefully, gently sat next to the family and offered the comfort of silently being there.

On Sunday the mother of a boy who acts in the same community theatre troupe as KayKay succumbed to cancer. While we are not as close to this family, the loss is no less tragic. And then there’s this other friend whose father has been battling his illness for more than a year.

Asking why does little good in situations like this. But “being there” does. As much as I’d like to shield KayKay from all this sorrow, we are doing just the opposite. I encourage her to reach out to these kids and to let them know she’s there to listen.

In checking out internet resources for helping teens with grief, I found this site and this interesting quote:

Sometimes we assume that teenagers will find comfort from their peers. But when it comes to death, this may not be true. It seems that unless friends have experienced grief themselves, they project their own feelings of helplessness by ignoring the subject of loss entirely.

Ignoring the loss is not a option…dealing with it head on is really the only way. This is something we understand at our house, albeit in a slightly different vein. And maybe that’s one of the reasons that KayKay is able to be such a supportive friend in the face of such a helpless time.

Here’s an interesting book I found by Lynne Hughes, the founder of Comfort Zone Camp, a camp for grieving children and teenagers: You Are Not Alone.

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