Updated: Sep 20
Getting through the "firsts" is the hardest part after someone we love dies. The first birthday. The first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas. Each one lands with that ache in the pit of your stomach. As adults, we can usually put words to what we are feeling. Our children often cannot - depending on their age, they may not even understand what they are feeling yet.
I want to be clear about something before I go on: I write this as a mom, not as a therapist. Grief therapy is not my area of expertise.
Walking a five-year-old through the loss of her father is.
Our Firsts
My husband passed away in March. Our daughter Bella had just turned five. My firsts began almost immediately - our anniversary would have been in May, then his birthday, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas. I was still on autopilot when the anniversary came. I was not processing yet; I was in survival mode, making sure Bella was okay.
For his birthday, I asked her how she wanted to celebrate his day. She said she wanted him to see balloons, and she wanted him to have some cake. I was honest with her: "Daddy will not be able to eat the cake - but we can make him one, and eat a piece for him." So that is what we did. We baked the cake. We took balloons to the cemetery and sang happy birthday. And before we released them, I asked Bella if she wanted to write something on hers. She did: "I love you, Daddy."
What Her Grief Looked Like
At five, Bella did not yet understand that death is permanent. In her little mind, she truly believed her daddy could still come back. The hardest part was not the holidays themselves - it was helping her understand that Daddy did not leave because he wanted to. That she was not abandoned. That she was, and is, deeply loved by him. That understanding does not arrive in one conversation. It develops over years, as the questions change with her growing mind.
And the questions do change. They go from "Why did he leave?" to "When is he coming back?" to "Did he want to leave me?" to the one that broke my heart the most: "I am afraid I will forget what he looks like."
The First Christmas
Christmas was the hardest first. Her dad had always played Santa - he would dress up and come in during dinner with a special gift, and Bella would sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas, never knowing it was him. So that year I had to figure out who would play Santa, while also explaining why Daddy could not come home.
We talked about heaven. We talked about how Daddy's love never goes away - that he was a beautiful star shining over us. Bella's world already had a little magic in it: a moon elf named Fiddleswerth I had invented for her when she was two. At night we would go outside and wave to the sky, because that is where Daddy lived now - among all the shining stars, watching over her and keeping her safe.
And Bella decided she wanted a special tree, just for Daddy. We made ornaments together. We wrote messages on paper and hung them on the branches. We found photographs and tucked them into the tree. And she left a present for him at the grave site - because at five, she still believed he might come out and open it. I let her. The gift was never really for him to open. It was for her love to have somewhere to go.
Give The Love A Job
That is the one thing I most want to hand you, parent to parent. When someone we love dies, the love does not stop. A child's love, left with nowhere to go, comes out in tears, in anger, in tummy aches, in three a.m. questions. Every ritual we made - the cake, the balloons, the tree, the gift at the grave - gave Bella's love a job to do. What helped us most:
- Answer honestly, in small, simple words. "Daddy will not be able to eat the cake" hurt less than confusion would have.
- Let your child lead the ritual. Their ideas will be truer than anything we could design for them.
- Make things together. Little hands process what little hearts cannot say.
- Expect the questions to change as they grow - and let them be asked a hundred times.
- Remember you are walking through the same firsts they are. Grief comes in waves. Some days are better than others, and that is allowed.
The One Thing I Would Do Differently
If I could rewind time, I would have found a grief group for Bella. I have a Masters and a Doctorate in psychology, and I told myself: I can handle this. She will be fine. And she did grow up to be fine - but there were painful stretches where being with other children who had lost a parent would have helped her feel less different. Other kids at school had lost dads too, but she still felt like the only one.
So please - never hesitate to seek out safe places where your child feels they belong. A grieving child should not have to feel different on top of everything else.
The Story Those Nights Became
All those nights of waving at the stars eventually became a book. When Daddy Becomes a Star is the story I could not find when Bella needed it - a gentle rhyming story for children ages 4-8 about a daddy who became a star, and love that changes shape but never leaves. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGG8VJWL
And if your family is walking through its own firsts this season, there is a free printable comfort letter from Fiddleswerth waiting for you - my gift, no purchase needed. https://www.fiddleswerth.com/letter
And over on Fiddleswerth, I wrote out the rituals themselves - the remembering tree, the cake, the gift at the grave, waving at the sky - along with a free printable poem for the first holiday: Give the Love a Job.
With you in the firsts,
Sandra
