1/8 So my eight-year-old daughter has been experiencing a lot of anxiety lately. She is as old as her big brother was when he was diagnosed with DIPG, an incurable, always fatal brain tumor, in 2016. Recently she has started asking to sleep with her mom again. It weighs on her.
2/8 Genevieve told her mom she is scared that she might fall asleep and not wake up. And what can she tell her? That it was extremely unlikely this would ever happen? Her brother had a one in a million disease, and he ‘fell asleep’ one day in April 2017 and never woke up.
3/8 At Thanksgiving everyone asked if she wanted to make a wish on the wishbone. My eight-year-old daughter declined, because, she said, ‘my wishes never come true.’ I know what she wishes for - that her big brother wouldn’t have died - and how his illness stole her innocence.
4/8 This is heartbreaking to watch in a child. She spent a year watching her brother, her best friend and the most important person in her world, slowly die, and while she showed extraordinary love and concern for him, she grew old, and learned hard lessons about life and loss.
5/8 There are so many things I grieve about the death of my son Elijah. One of the hardest is that my daughter will grow up never knowing the person her brother could have become, and that she could have become growing up with him. She’s been 3 yrs in counseling. An 8 yr old.
6/8 Genevieve has learned that there are things her mom and dad can’t protect her from. That the most earnest, deeply held wishes can’t come true. It’s hard to know how to parent through this. She is a normal, healthy, happy kid in many ways. But her anxiety shows.
7/8 We continue to incorporate Elijah into our daily life and rituals. His ashes are in a wooden urn on the table, and every morning and eve we light and blow it out and tell him we love him. We joke about what he would like and dislike. But she is almost older than him.
8/8 Soon she will be older than her older brother, and he will be ... what, exactly? A source of memories of what could have been, growing more remote as she becomes an adult. An empty stocking by the fireplace. And a wishbone that will never break her way.
