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When I was ten years old life was all about living. Although I moved around a lot as an army brat, which meant I was making new friends every few months and saying goodbye to old ones constantly, I had not yet said a final farewell to any of my beloved family members. The concept of grief was not yet in my emotional vocabulary.

All of that changed one morning during our regular summer stay in my mom's home town. Along with her two brothers and their families, and a few other more distant relations, my grandparents lived in a sweet little house tucked into the cozy valley town in which they had lived since immigrating to Canada from Sweden some fifty years earlier. Only the CNN train whistle would ever disrupt, at regular intervals throughout the evening, the tranquility of this peaceful world.

On this particular occasion, I'd slept over at my cousins place the previous night. That tranquil summer morning, as we lumbered down the road, back to my Grandma's kitchen rich with the aroma of fried bacon and freshly baked bread, we noticed the ethereal reflection of flashing lights waving to us from over the crest of the hill. The closer we came to the unusual scene, the more confusing the vision grew.

As was his habit, my Great Uncle had been cycling to the post office to pick up his early mail. From Grandma's kitchen window my mother witnessed him fall and rushed out to help. By the time she reached him he was not breathing. She immediately began CPR and my Grandma called for the ambulance.

Later that morning, as the grownups huddled around their coffees in Grandma's kitchen nook, I struggled to understand what had happened. People I knew, had known all of my young life, were avoiding my eyes. Their hushed conversations were stilted, lacking the warm banter I would naturally expect from a family gathering. My mom was especially distant. Something astounding had happened, of that I was sure, but I had no idea what.

Illustrations © Barbara J Holzapfel

I don't recall exactly how I discovered that someone close to me had died, but at some point I understood I would never again see this person. That I would come to accept death and dying as an inevitable aspect of living was not yet present in my awareness. It would take many more shocking events for me to witness my life through the profound gratitude only accessible to those who understand mortality.

As we strive to shield our children from the unavoidable pain of grief, we also rob them of the rich benefits experienced from appreciating the fleeting nature of life.