Today one of my second graders looked my family picture with all five of our kids and asked me to tell him what their names were. He looked at Lynda's picture and started laughing and saying "He looks funny". I said "Well, this is Lynda and she's a girl". He said "Well, she looks funny. What's wrong with her face?" I explained to him that she was handicapped and she had a stroke and then tried to explain that. He looked at me with complete seriousness and said "So, is that why she looks funny?"
It's the same picture that is on the first page of the blog. Of course, to me Lynda was a beautiful little girl and even after her stroke she was beautiful to me. I wasn't upset with my student. He was being completely honest and with his own disability he didn't have the capacity for not saying exactly what was on his mind. I think he was trying to say she look "different" but didn't know how to word it. I think he understood when I explained she had been very sick and died this summer. He asked me more about the other children (now adults) and I told him that they now were married and had children and he worked on understanding which two were my two boys and that the other two were Russ's children. He understood blended families. He said "So she was your daughter before you married Mr. Russ" and I said "Yes".
I could feel the broken places in my heart hurt. I wanted so badly to tell him all about her but I knew he was too young to understand any more than what I'd already talked about with him.
It made my heart hurt for the loss of my precious child.
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