Loss and Suicide
Emmi Smid
Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 978-1-84905-629-8
£11.99
34 pages
This is a book aimed at helping parents and adults who are dealing with children aged six plus who have lost a parent through suicide. It is a beautifully illustrated and produced book to be read by adults with a child so that the child's feelings and thoughts can be explored.
The story is about Luna talking to her father on the first anniversary of her mother's death through suicide. It is a sunny day and the family (father, Luna and her little brother) are having a picnic in the park, but Luna is feeling sad. Luna is wearing her mother's red hat and on being told by her father that she looks just like her mum, Luna gets angry and says she is nothing like her mum as she would not have just stopped living when she wanted to. Father explains that mum had an illness in her head and the doctors could not make her better.
Luna wonders what could have happened if she had been less naughty. Father explains that it was not Luna's, father's or mother's fault. The family visit mother's grave and all three look sad; father and Luna saying they miss mother. The book ends on a happier note with a picnic and pleasant memories surfacing about mum. Father uses words of endearment and the illustrations depict loving relationships between father and the children.
This very sensitive and difficult subject is explored well with issues of ongoing connection to and identification with mother (Luna wears mother's red hat), anger, sadness and fear that father may leave too. The book illustrates suicide as a consequence of mental illness; children feeling responsible for causing parental suicide; the remaining parent's ability to create an atmosphere of openness where parental suicide is not seen as a taboo subject; and the importance of marking death anniversaries in some way as they can be a time of more intense grief.
It seems rather unusual for a little girl of about seven to have gone to the park by herself, as father and the little brother find her there. Some mention of the little brother's experiences would have shown that everyone in the family was grieving.
A mention of different feelings re-surfacing from time to time, and the importance of talking about them whenever the child wants to, would have shown that grieving can continue and can be talked about.
This book is of particular importance as it helps adults broach this subject with the child, rather than just being offered advice.
There is a useful guide for parents about how children of different ages understand and deal with loss, and how to talk to them about it, from Dr Riet Fiddelaers-Jaspers, a bereavement specialist from the Netherlands. For further information, online links to Dr Fiddelaers-Jaspers and the UK NHS are also given. For the UK market, it would have been useful to have included an online link to Child Bereavement UK (www.childbereavementuk.org), which has useful factsheets.
