Soxman Funeral Homes in Penn Hills marks 3rd annual Children’s Grief Awareness Day

Children learned about grief and how to process it while enjoying snacks, listening to a storytime, crafting and hanging out with Lilo, a bereavement care dog, during Soxman Funeral Home’s third annual Children’s Grief Awareness Day event Nov. 22.

Created by The Highmark Caring Place in 2008, Children’s Grief Awareness Day now is internationally observed on the third Thursday of November.

McKenna Swartzwelder came up with the idea to have an event at the funeral home about three years ago when she joined the Soxman staff as a funeral director. She said she discovered The Highmark Caring Place’s annual event and figured the funeral home could do something similar for its own community.

“It started small. It’s been fluctuating year by year. (When) it started out, we only had like five kids the first year,” Swartzwelder said. “Last year was a really big year because, unfortunately, we had a lot of people pass that had young kids.”

Soxman co-owner Anna Nesbit said about 10 or 12 kids attended last year’s event. This year, the five children who attended were relatives of the funeral home staff.

Jean Kanouff, a greeter at the funeral home, read “In Loving Memory” by Lacie Brueckner and Katherine Pendergast, “I Remember My Breath” by Lynn Rummel and “The Grief Rock” by Natasha Daniels to the children.

Then the kids did a scavenger hunt for 10 little blue butterflies hidden around the funeral home before doing craft activities such as coloring butterfly ornaments, creating a “thankful tree” with the names of loved ones on the leaves, coloring grief rocks and crafting “Ooglies” — little paper dolls to confide in.

Nesbit’s children — 12-year-old Ethan and 10-year-old Evelyn — also attended to help set up the event, although Nesbit said they also “end up sitting and being really reflective on things, too,” such as the passing of their family dog, Calla.

“We all took it really hard,” Nesbit said. “Whenever we’ve asked them to help us, like, ‘Can you guys do an example of one of the crafts,’ or anything like that, they want to use Calla as the example because that is their truest understanding of grief.”

Nesbit said even when losing a pet, teaching young children to normalize feelings of sadness and helping them memorialize the loss is important.

“Then the next time they’re faced with that, they understand it differently, or they understand how to process it in a more healthy manner,” Nesbit said.

Swartzwelder said it’s important for everyone to realize that “every child has the capacity to grieve,” and it may look different from adult grieving.

She said it’s important for everyone to realize children may not grieve in the same way adults do as they don’t always know how to handle their feelings.

“If you have the capacity to love, you have the capacity to grieve,” she said. “It’s important to take their feelings into consideration and just listen to them, feel them and let them know it’s okay to feel all their feelings.”

Danielle Graham, school counselor for Knoch School District and Nesbit’s sister-in-law, also attended the event. She said it can take children “longer than you might think” to grieve a loss and that they may need help to process it.

“It’s just important to acknowledge it and just keep talking about it. Keep doing things like this, activities, crafts, whatever it might be,” Graham said. “Talk about that person and let them have a way to express their feelings.”