ABSTRACT
Following the death of a loved one, parents, teachers, and school-based mental health professionals play an important role in supporting children’s adaptive coping. The following narrative offers an example of how an elementary school coped with grief following the death of a beloved principal. In this narrative, I address several basic challenges, related to Worden’s tasks of grief (2008): (a) accepting that death as real and irreversible; (b) with support, facing the emotional pain rather than avoiding the pain; (c) learning to adapt to a variety of changes in the environment; and (d) remembering and memorializing the deceased person’s life. I close the narrative by offering several resources to support students following the death of a loved one.
