I'm beginning to see the impact of my grandmother's death on my kids, particularly Emmett. None of my kids are talking about her or the fact that she's passed, and that's in stark contrast to what things were like while she was still with us.
All three of my kids are Autistic, and that can make dealing with things like death, much more complicated.
For the most part, Gavin seems to be doing okay. I showed him a video that my Dad sent me. It was taken a few days before she passed. She was thanking Gavin for the letter he wrote and read to her. She thanked him for sharing a video with her and told him how much she loved him.
Gavin was clearly choked up by it, but I think it was more about him being happy that he had made her happy. He's constantly asking me if I'm okay because he can't read my body language or he misreads it and wants to make sure everything is okay. It's sweet, and while it can be a bit much, I appreciate that he's checking up on me.
Elliott, on the other hand, won't talk about it at all. He stopped going to see her a few weeks back when it became clear that she wasn't getting better.
This poor kid wears his heart on his sleeve and experiences emotions very intensely. He has a difficult time processing grief and letting things go. It's not easy trying to figure out how to best support him because he doesn't talk about things that bother him. All we can do is follow his lead, make sure he knows it's okay to be sad and that he can talk to us about anything. Ongoing therapy is a necessity, as well.
When it comes to Mr. Emmett, he's a bit more open about things and is still struggling to decide if he wants to go to the funeral services.
While he's open to talking about the topic of my grandmother, he's not very gifted in the art of expressing his own feelings, especially about something this profound. He tends to experience more emotional outbursts because that's the only way he can get those trapped and confusing emotions out.
He's had a number of outbursts today. Most notably, he had a massive meltdown because he didn't get the last root beer flavored *Italian Ice *that was in the freezer. He ended up with mango because he couldn't find root beer. Elliott picked his out after Emmett had already started eating his, and ended up pulling the last root beer flavored one out of the freezer.
Emmett very quickly unravled and there was no calming him down.
It was very clear that Emmett was emotionally overwhelmed and not able to process his feelings. Under different circumstances, this probably wouldn't have been the cataclysmic event it ended up being. He might have been upset, but he would have been able to move to something else.
He's incredibly overwhelmed.
Everyone is heartbroken, and each one of us deals with it differently. Some of us deal better than others, but everyone grieves in their own way, and that's okay.
I don't imagine a great deal of processing is going to take place before the services this week, and it's going to take time to put things back together.
