Guidebook

There is no guidebook on how to tell your children that their father is dead.  Nobody has written one.  Because you would not have time to read it, anyway.  That news comes to you in a cruel and bitter flash, from complete strangers, and then you are expected, as all good mothers are, to know how to tell it to your children.  And in your first moments of grief and desperation and agony and anger you cry and scream at all who are in the room (the complete strangers who brought you the news), “How can I tell my babies?!  How do I do this??  Please, NO!  I cannot tell them this.  How can I??” 

And just in case this happens to you, I will let you know in advance, that no one will tell you how.  They will stare at you blankly and shrug their shoulders slightly and look uncomfortably down at their shoes.  Because they don’t know, either.  And they, as parents and/or lovers of others themselves, cannot begin to fathom how it can be done.  You see the sorrow in their eyes and you know that even though they don’t know you, they understand.  And you can tell by their eyes that they wish they did not have to bring you that news.  They wish they did not have to ask you into the room and gently guide you into a chair.  They wish it wasn’t their job to convince you to sit.  And before you even have the chance to wonder why they are at your school and why they want you in a chair and how they already know your name, they start in on the news. 

And when they are done speaking they wish they did not have to watch the aftermath.  Because they are parents and lovers too and they don’t have any answers.  And you can see it in their eyes that they care but they are helpless, like you are, because nobody wrote a guidebook on how to tell your children that their father is dead.