ABSTRACT
However, sooner or later, the shield is pulled away and children come face to face
with death.
One thing is certain: children are not immune to death, particularly the deaths of
close family members. One in twenty American children loses one or both parents
to death-particularly in lower-income families; a higher percentage lose other
relatives, neighbors, and friends (Parachin, 2006, p. 60). Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland’s
childhood encounter with death convinced him that loss is life shaping and a
determinant of how he or she (and the adult he or she becomes) deals with death:
‘‘My mother died of colon cancer one week after my eleventh birthday, and that
fact has shaped my life. All that I have become and much that I have not become, I
trace directly or indirectly to her death.’’
