Everyone said that Wanda was a gypsy. She had long shiny black hair, sharply defined facial features and an always tanned complexion. But it was not her coloring or face that suggested “gypsy.” It was her clothes and how she moved that linked her to wildness and to the exotic. Wanda moved with graceful hyper-animation. She ran and jumped and flailed her arms. Her large hands gestured constantly and her long fingers were unforgettably beautiful. She wore bright colors, and was the only girl in school with earrings.
Wanda was an older girl and not one of my friends. She was 10 years old when I was 7. Every day as I entered the side schoolyard where the classes lined up I would scan the scores of children, and find the brightest movement. That flash of color would always be Wanda. Not a beautiful child, but fascinating to a seven-year-old boy. She was different, a standout among all of the other children.
So that day when she was nowhere to be found among the throng was special. She was one of those kids who was never absent. I missed her. I worried about her. Asking around at afternoon recess I heard that she would be out for the week. No one seemed to know why. The schoolyard seemed lifeless for days.
A week later, still no life in the yard, but Wanda was there. She was tall and thin, dark and quiet. She dressed all in black, her new color at school until that day she left and never came back.
All of the times I had watched Wanda with wonder and admiration, I never had the nerve to speak to her. She never knew I existed. Even in black though, I was drawn to her. She seemed subdued and tamed for a long time. Eventually she regained some of her animation, though the color of her clothing remained gray or black.
After a few weeks the rumor reached me, that Wanda’s father had died. Her life had changed. It was as if all of the color and most of the energy had been removed. She no longer whizzed by with sparkling eyes and teeth, and arms waving. She still played, but barely as part of the group, not standing out among them. I missed wild Wanda terribly. Others played with her but seemed to keep some distance. It wasn’t just her changes, but the changes of the friends who used to surround her.
Then the dread entered my awareness. What If I lost one of my parents? I didn’t like how Wanda’s life appeared to have changed. I began to avoid looking for her. I thought of her less with admiration and more with nervousness. My father was sick, very sick. For a few years he was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes. I was frightened to enter the nursing home when he was there. I would visit him only when he sat outside the back door wearing a robe and sitting in a wheelchair. He was always thin, but never as thin as he was at that backdoor of the nursing home.
Finally he came home, but stayed in bed. I didn’t understand, but I knew that if he were better, he wouldn’t be in bed all the time. Father’s return home with a nurse, my mother’s always worried face, my brother’s nasty “shut ups” combined with the changes in Wanda left me with fear, resentment and dread. “Why me too?”
Then I became aware of a girl in my class, Florence, who was a foster child. I learned that Florence had lost both of her parents, and was living with a neighborhood family who was not related to her. She was an orphan. Was I about to become an orphan?
A few months later, my father did indeed die, and life forever changed for my mother, my brother and me. I did not become an orphan. I did not have to leave our home. I did not have to leave my school. I did not have to wear black. I did not lose my place among my friends. But there was a hole in my life that none of my friends or cousins had experienced.
The effects of the loss of my father were great over the years, but were unnoticed by outsiders. For my brother and me there were changes that come from single parenting increased independence and responsibility. We were lucky. Our mother was always sensitive to how we were affected, and did her best to make up for anything that we might miss.
When children lose a parent the consequences will appear somewhere sometime. There will be changes. They might appear in school performance, social or personal relationships, emotional reactions, aggressive or shy behaviors, isolation or attention seeking. On the surface the effects may seem minor, but loss of a parent in childhood is always major. Unlike adults, children want and need parents to express or act out their emotions: fears, anger, guilt resentment, upheaval. They are different from that moment of loss forever.
As parents, we must recognize that even children of healthy parents have fear that one or both of their parents will die and be lost to them forever. No amount of assurance will totally salve that lurking fear. If that fear is realized, whether in childhood or in adulthood, the dreaded event leaves them forever changed.
My childhood lost some energy when the color and animation disappeared from Wanda and the schoolyard. As parents we must never lose sight of the temporary nature of existence, the fear of loss, and the hopes of our children that they and we will live forever.