"When we suffer the loss of someone we love, we know what it means to be left alone and behind. To know death, to feel and bear loss, gives someone an understanding that no poem, movie, or book could convey."
In the past, child mortality shaped lives profoundly, forcing people to cope with grief from an early age, fostering compassion for the grieving later in life.
I spent my whole life putting Karen in that horrible night, in that horrible place where I saw her and identified her body and I couldn't let that image go. The book helped me do that and so now she lives again.
The need to look after other family members, such as the surviving parent or siblings, makes older parentless siblings mature quickly. There was a feeling that this was not something they were prepared for, but something that needed to be done.