In late October, my beloved uncle died in a bicycle accident. Our large family is no stranger to loss, but this one felt different in its suddenness and mystery, leaving us all with a gnawing sense of disbelief. We were shocked by the painful realization that someone we loved could be enjoying a daily hobby one moment and forever unconscious the next.
While every member of our extended family grappled with my uncle’s death in their own way, I found myself experiencing something unfamiliar: coping with grief while caring for a young child. My husband and I had welcomed our first baby, a sweet daughter with a shock of red hair, only a few months before my uncle’s passing.
When it came time to make visitation and funeral plans, I was perplexed. There’s no guidebook for what’s right and wrong in a time of grief, but my mind spiraled as I considered whether we should bring our baby to the services. The funeral would take us across the state and require a hotel stay, so that was obstacle number one — anyone who’s traveled with an infant knows that plotting the logistics alone can be exhausting.
There was also the anxiety of bringing our little girl into a large crowd of (well-meaning) humans who might feel compelled to squeeze, snag, or — god forbid — kiss her as we navigated the sad small talk of a funeral. While she was up to date on all her shots, our anxiety lingered.
Of course, there were also absurd hypotheticals as I pondered what it would be like to tote our daughter around during a visitation and funeral mass. Would she fart with reckless abandon during a silent moment of prayerful contemplation? Would she magically learn to walk in the middle of mass and gleefully topple over every statue of the Virgin Mary she could find? Would she proudly show off her newfound talent for screaming at the very moment someone was tearfully sharing a story about my uncle, thus leading us to be shunned from my family forever?
Perhaps most confusingly, I wondered whether there was validity to my strange sense of guilt. In this horribly dark moment for our family, I was struck with the fear that I would somehow detract from the solemnity of the occasion by bringing along my ray of joy.
The complex reality of death is that it mingles closely with the joy of living.
I questioned whether I’d show some lack of decorum by making light conversation with fellow guests about my daughter’s sleep schedule and penchant for blowing raspberries and the way she’s starting to find her giggle. Would I even have time to fully experience my own grief?
But she is my daughter, and she will never meet her great uncle. I so desperately wanted her to be present in the same space as him at least once, even just symbolically, so we decided to bring her along.
When the funeral weekend rolled around, we solved most of the logistical concerns easily. My husband and I took turns babywearing, which cut down on her being passed around like a football. She snoozed peacefully throughout most of the solemn moments and managed to hold in her gas for the duration of the eulogy — a proud moment for us as parents.
As we made the rounds and met with family, my guilt eased.
I watched as family members smiled through tears at our baby’s tiny snores and asked about her most recent milestones, which provided all of us some much-needed distraction from the reality of the occasion. She smiled up at loved ones who we rarely see and might otherwise have gone years without meeting her.
I showed her photos of my uncle throughout his fascinating life as we strolled around the funeral home. Though she’ll have no memory of it, I felt a strange peace in knowing she had the chance to “meet” him.
Above all, I was struck by the full circle-ness of it all and the way my perspective shifted from one of anxious apprehension to one rooted in a new baseline belief: When in doubt, bring your kid to the funeral.
The complex reality of death is that it mingles closely with the joy of living, so much so that people like my uncle can be taking part in a joyful activity in one instant and slipping into death the very next. A small child at a funeral can help remind us that there are still new beginnings during these painful endings, bittersweet as they might be.
As she grows, I want my daughter to understand that grief will be a part of her life. I want her to know it’s OK for her and Mom and Dad and Grandpa and Grandma to cry. I want her to unashamedly experience her full range of emotions, to talk about them, and to show up for the people she loves. To look for pockets of joy in dark moments.
I want to tell her that sometimes, even when she was too small to know, she herself was the joy.
Sophie Boudreau is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience covering lifestyle, culture, and political topics. She previously served as senior editor at eHow and produced Michigan travel content for Only In Your State. Other credits include BuzzFeed and COURIER, where she currently contributes as a national writer. When she’s not writing, Sophie can be found thrifting with her husband and daughter, traveling, and shamelessly bingeing ‘90 Day Fiancé’ in all its iterations.
