Author Ken Gire writes: The children's writer Katherine Paterson wrote a book based on her son David's loss of a childhood friend. It was his best friend. Her name was Lisa. The book was Bridge to Terabithia, which won the Newbery Medal for the best children's book in the year it was published. In her acceptance speech, she described how Lisa's death affected her son:

He is not fully healed. Perhaps he never will be, and I am beginning to believe that this is right. How many people in their whole lifetimes have a friend who is to them what Lisa was to David? When you have such a gift, should you ever forget it? Of course he will forget a little. Even now he is making other friendships. His life will go on, though hers could not. And selfishly I want his pain to ease. But how can I say that I want him to "get over it," as though having loved and been loved were some sort of disease? I want the joy of knowing Lisa and the sorrow of losing her to be a part of him and to shape him into growing levels of caring and understanding, perhaps as an artist, but certainly as a person.

[Ken Gire continues:] As a father … I want to shield [my children] … from the sadness of friends who die young or family members who die old. I want to keep them from the frustration of flat tires and from the heartache of lost loves. I want to shelter them from the uncertainties of life as well as its tragedies. I want to keep them from scoliosis and emergency trips to the hospital, from high temperatures and febrile seizures.

I can't, of course. I know that. Still, I try.

Like Katherine Paterson, I want their pain to ease. But also like her, I know that their joys and their sorrows will shape them into growing levels of understanding. Perhaps as artists, but certainly as human beings.