February 3, 2026

To Monrovia — With Love, Matila

A reflection on Loss, Culture, and the Grief Our Children Carry

When my father died, he was only thirty-three years old.

I was seven.

On the well-loved futon we proudly called our couch, my mother sat my brother and me down and told us—clearly, calmly—that our father had died. She had always been good at saying hard things plainly. A nurse by training and instinct, she believed in truth, in information, in meeting reality head-on. Her parenting was modern before it had a name: open conversations, books placed in our hands, science and facts offered as anchors.

I remember feeling confused more than anything else. That was the first time death entered my life in a real way.

My parents met in New York in the early 1980s. They fell in love, got married, and for a time, tried to make a family work. Their relationship was tumultuous, and by the time I was three years old, they had separated. I remember calling his job when he worked security—asking for the supervisor, convinced that if I could just reach the right person, someone would put him on the phone.

I didn’t know my father well enough to grieve the way movies or books said I should, but I knew enough to feel that something important had ended.

My father was Muslim, and his funeral was unlike anything I had ever experienced. There was no casket at the front of the room. I didn’t see his body. Instead, we gathered quietly, sitting together in a solemn space.

People spoke about my father—stories of who he was, how he showed up, what they remembered and admired.

I felt out of place.
I didn’t have anything to share.

At one point, a gentleman asked my mother if she forgave my father. In Muslim tradition, forgiveness is believed, from what I understand, to help release the soul to Jannah (جَنَّة). She said yes. No one asked me or my brother how we felt.

Children are often expected to be resilient, to move on, to “be okay.” But grief that isn’t named doesn’t disappear. It waits. It shows up later—in identity, relationships, questions about belonging, and unanswered longing. As a child, I didn’t have the words to say I was grieving. I wasn’t crying every day. I wasn’t visibly falling apart. But I was trying to understand loss without context, culture without explanation, and a father I barely knew who was suddenly gone forever.

At Roberta’s House, we create space for children to grieve in ways that make sense to them. We don’t rush them. We don’t minimize their experience. We recognize that a child can grieve a parent they barely knew, and that those feelings can change over time.

Our work is informed by national leaders like National Alliance for Children’s Grief (NACG), which emphasizes the importance of developmentally appropriate, honest conversations about death. We also draw inspiration from the Sesame Workshop and its “Forgotten Griever” resources, which remind us that even very young children experience loss—and deserve support that honors their perspective.

When we support families, we often share a few guiding principles:

Use clear, simple language. Children deserve the truth in words they can understand.
Invite questions, even repeated ones. Repetition is how children process.
Include children in rituals when possible, with preparation and choice.
Allow mixed emotions—or no visible emotion at all.
Remember that grief evolves. A loss at seven will feel different at fourteen, and again at adulthood.

Grief isn’t a single moment. It grows as children grow.

I never got to say goodbye to my father.
I never got to forgive him out loud.

But now, I help create spaces where other children can. And in that way, the story doesn’t end where it once did—it continues, with intention, care, and room for truth.

I care for you. You care for me. We take care for each other.

Be well,

Matila