Those kids were rotten

"Creepy?" They went through many months of watching their terminally ill father waste away until finally dying. And they ARE kids. Did you prefer for them to be disheveled, juvenile basket cases? Do you think even their late father would have wanted for them to turn into emotional cripples for the rest of their lives?

We can't completely understand children's defense mechanisms and how they cope with the loss of a parent when they're so young; and each child deals with bereavement in his or her own own way. Judging them as "creepy" seems awfully harsh. Those boys had already spent two years enduring everything you could expect to weigh down on them during their dad's illness; but now that he was dead and buried, the world was still turning and the living must go on about the business of living.

I didn't see the kids as creepy at all. Their father didn't die suddenly. They had time to deal with and accept the fact he was going to die. In fact, when someone goes through a long illness and has been suffering, it's almost a relief that it's over. Their suffering has ended.

Other than their father's death, the boys lives were pretty stable. They were still in the same house, they had friends around they'd known for years, the were in the same social circle as before, their mom was around and as attentive as ever; very little had changed. Dealing with something stressful like a loss is hard but it helps when everything else is pretty normal.

By the time their mom was about to run off to New York with some guy they and she barely knew, things were different. They still were dealing with losing dad but now it was as if they were about to be abandoned by their mother too. Not only that, they had recently relocated to another state, another home, a new school, new friends, new daily reality. That's a lot of change all at once. Then they're home but their mom is spending a lot of time elsewhere. They are hearing whispers and feeling weird to hear the unkind, accusatory things people are saying about their mom and family.

It was too much for the boys to handle so they fled to grandma's house. That was a bit of normalcy even though they and she had never been very close. Dealing with too many stressful situations at once can be overwhelming for an adult. For a kid it must feel like being at the bottom of an abyss with no way out. They lack the experiences and years to know how to process let alone handle all the feelings and information that's stirring inside and coming at them.

Let's cut the kids some slack.