Quinn with his mother and father in Wakefield, Quebec August 17, 2016. Photo: Blair Gable
This article originally appeared on macleans.ca
Although I used to be a travel writer, I took my most frightening journey only recently, with my family, without ever leaving our small Quebec village.
After my father died in 2012, my son was so shattered that he transformed from a regular, bright, happy-go-lucky, soccer-loving 10-year-old into a near-stranger dominated by bizarre rules of magical thinking all designed to bring his grandpa back to life.
My husband and I were alarmed that, for such an even-keeled kid, our son would plunge into an existential crisis after losing his grandpa. He was unable to grasp the finality of death; a tidal wave of grief was forever smashing him down and he couldn?t find his way to the surface. But as winter turned to spring, I started noticing his grief easing up a little. He was no longer crying into his pillow at night and had started laughing again. Except, now he was doing something else that I found peculiar. One evening I was sitting beside him in our living room while he seemed to be unconsciously tapping each elbow onto the back of the couch. Four taps of the left elbow, four taps of the right. A few tapless minutes would pass and then he?d start the routine again. Over the coming weeks, what we called ?making things even? became more complex, seemingly full of complicated rules. One day he started turning his head as far as it would go over ...