Three days after flying back from Amsterdam to Finland, I flew back from Finland to Amsterdam again, as my best friend’s mum was dying. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, she had been dying for a while, but now she was ‘dying dying’. In the end she had a gekozen dood, a chosen death, I will probably elaborate on euthanasia in another blog but for the purpose of this week’s blog the timing of her death was important for a different reason. We celebrated her sixtieth birthday a few weeks ago, and she was determined to live until her granddaughter’s second birthday (which is this Saturday). Yet, when she knew this would not be possible, she was dead set (pardon the pun) to not die nor be buried on her granddaughter’s birthday. She died on Tuesday, and the funeral service will be held tomorrow, leaving space to celebrate her granddaughter’s life on Saturday.
How we speak to children about death and dying, and how we speak with children about death and dying is something I find very important. There will be many children who experience loss at a very young age and it is simple books like Dick Bruna’s Lieve Oma Pluis that will help foster conversations between children and adults about losing a loved one. Written in 1996, the English translation Dear Grandma Bunny did not appear until 2018, which is…. interesting.
Nijntje, or Miffy for international readers, is an iconic figure, the simple bunny shape easily recognizable. The Dutch word for rabbit or bunny is konijn, tje or je indicates something is small in Dutch, so the books are about little Nijn. The prose of the book, like all Nijntje books is simple and straightforward:
“Nijntje was toch zo verdrietig
Nijntje had een dikke traan
Weetje waarom Nijntje huilde?
Oma Pluis was doodgegaan”
— Dick Bruna in: Lieve Oma Pluis
I am not a professional translator, and I am sure the official English version will rhyme, but the text translates roughly into:
Nijntje was so really sad,
Nijntje had a big tear
Do you know why Nijntje was crying?
Oma Pluis died.
In very few words accompanied by beautiful pictures crafted by Bruna, the book talks about grandma dying, everyone being sad, coffins and funerals. My blog is already more words than the actual book, but it is perfect for children to understand the reality of dying, that all the big people might be sad and cry, even though you have never seen this before. And that it is ok to be sad.
So we will celebrate my best friend’s daughter’s birthday on Saturday, as she will start her second year of life. And she will receive some books as birthday gifts from me (because books are the best gift, irrespective of age) and this one will definitely be amongst them, so she’ll never forget her own Oma Pluis.
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