In The Glass Table by Leigh K. Cunningham, fourteen year-old Jack Irwin-Hunter hikes to Lake Como after running away from home. Since his younger brother was killed in a tragic accident, Jack has suffered alone while his parents mourned their loss. He believes his parents no longer care about him—his mother is always crying and clutching a photo of Colby, and his father wanders their garden aimlessly. When Jack is cast into a spell to live as a river spirit, he is able to return home unseen and unheard. It is only then does he realize that his parents were not abandoning him, as he had thought, but were suffering a great loss.
As a child, when a sibling dies, there is no way to understand your parent's grieving, but as an adult, one can see the experience with an entirely different perspective. In The Glass Table, Jack comes to this realization, as he is able to hear his parents discuss how much they miss him, and the lengths they will go in order to find him and bring him home.
This storyline is based on the author’s personal experience following the tragic loss of her older brother in a motorbike accident when he was just two months past his seventeenth birthday. The author was sixteen. Their family imploded, and the loss eventually resulted in the death of the eldest brother, John, in a similarly tragic way.
What a wonderful resource for parents that do not know how to help their children through the grief of losing a sibling.
Posted by: Pam Brown | November 10, 2009 at 05:55 PM