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I like to listen to NPR when I drive. This afternoon on my way back home, I caught the tail end of “All Things Considered”. Robert Siegel was interviewing author Chris Raschka about his most recent work, “A Ball for Daisy”.
“A Ball For Daisy” is a picture book about coping with loss that was inspired by Raschka’s son, who at the age of 4, lost his favorite ball. The author explained it was the first time his son had lost something he was very attached to, and he, as a father, was impacted by the experience and wanted to create a book that might help other children.
This made me think about my own childhood and first loss experience. As I recall, the first loss that greatly affected me was when my mother took away my favorite blanket when I was around two or three years old. (I have a very good memory and remember several events from when I was as young as 2 years old). It was an old, tattered polyester quilt. The outside was silky white with blue flowers and the filling was something akin to cotton but more scratchy. I really shouldn’t have known what the stuffing was made of, but there were so many holes in the blanket it would have been impossible not to. I loved that blanket. It was so soft and comforting. I wasn’t like Linus from Charlie Brown. I didn’t drag it everywhere I went. But I definitely slept with it every night.
One night, as I was going to bed, my blanket was missing. My mom told me she had given it to my great grandmother. When I cried, she soothed me by saying my great grandmother needed it to make a pillow for herself. It worked. My great grandmother was my favorite person in the world, and I remember being ok with the loss of my blanket if it helped her.
The next time I visited my great grandmother she showed me the pillow case that supposedly contained my blanket. Truth is, I doubt it did. But at the time it gave me comfort.
Ironically, the second major loss in my life was when my great grandmother died when I was 7. She was the person I loved most and her passing marked a pretty damn dreadful year for me.
In case you’re wondering, the image to the left is a drawing of Michael Jackson’s son, Blanket, submitted to a website by a fan whose name I don’t know because it appears to be written in an Asian language. Seriously, what kind of person names their child Blanket?? Still, it seemed fitting since I was on the topic of blankets and loss.
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