What do say to people in grief

People don't know what to say to others who are grieving. They fear upsetting them, they don't know how to behave. But as my family learned, people who are grieving are desperate for support, for connection. It's always better to reach out to someone and just say simply, "I'm sorry," to let them know you're thinking about them, to give them a hug, and feel assured that that alone is enough.

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 42.

Free children, protective parents

I thought about my own children and the world they were in now—how they rarely went outside; rarely rode their bikes. What happened? I wondered. What happened to my generation? How had we been the kids with so much freedom, who then grew up to deny this freedom to our own children? This adventure. This sense of discovery and danger and risk and recovery.

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 32.

And yet, when I looked at the Sunday Tampa Tribune [from] the morning Jon disappeared, I was struck by what I saw.

An article headlined "What Are Our Children Missing?" opened with a quote from a local art teacher and mother of two. "Children today have been shortchanged," she told the reporter. "When I was young, we could wander in the woods, we could breathe and run free."

She and other parents didn't think that life in the early seventies wasn't as adventurous as it seemed.Kids were getting overscheduled, they believed, confined by a regimen of after-school activities that was curtailing their independence and exploration.

Id., ch. 34.

Where are the dangers for kids?

[W]hile Ball limited how far his own children could go after this tragedy, he already sensed that that fear was coming at a price. Despite the horror of what happened to our family, he knew, children were more likely to die from an accident inside the home than to get abducted and killed. "That's where the danger is," he told me, "but that's not where danger is in the minds of the parents."

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 41.

Grief is isolating, but community can help

[W]hile our experience of death was unique, the experience of grieving, of living with grief, of living with death, was universal. I was isolated by my grief for many reasons—my age, the circumstances, the mystery—but I had come to see how everyone is isolated by grief; how grief sends you spiraling inside yourself and how only you can find a way out. And the way out, as my parents discovered, was by finding support and community in other people.

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 33.

The wild carousel of early parenthood

We were riding the wild carousel of early parenthood: the donkey rides and cotton candy, the face painting and sand art. . . . Life had transformed from dive bars and Dead shows to Chuck E. Cheese's and the Wiggles.

. . . [W]e embraced the joyful chaos. As we pushed our overstuffed strollers around the suburban fair, sticky sippy cups and ragged baby dolls spilling from our arms, we did so with the harried insanity and good-humored amazement that every new parent knows.

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 28.

When a child learns the world is dangerous

Kids grow up hearing fairy tales, but the biggest fairy tale of all, I realized at the age of four, is that life is safe. Life isn't safe, I learned. It's crazy. Evil is real. One minute you could be riding your bike on the way to get candy, and the next, you're dead. Anything could happen anywhere at the time. So now what? How was I supposed to live without giving in to the fear?

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 18.

Mourning in the public eye

We were a public family, and Jon's murder was a part of the community. This wasn't the same for the other deaths, I realized. No one knew the story of my dad's father, Abraham, when my dad said Kaddish for him. But when my family stood for Jon, they saw the emptiness that was there, the missing person in our family who never returned. 

David Kushner, Alligator Candy: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), ch. 16.