Over the past year, our son (8), has become a massive football (and Liverpool) fan, having shown very little interest before that. We've been fortunate that, aside from when he was very small, he has not had to contend with grief.
When the news broke on Thursday, I worried how he would take it. He seemed sad but a bit confused, like he couldn't quite understand what it meant.
The next morning, he was practicing his reading to me with a chapter of a book that tells the story of the 23/24 season. He read a sentence where Mo sets up a goal for Diogo. As soon as he read Diogo's name, he broke into floods of tears and was inconsolable for about 10 minutes. We watched one of the excellent videos the club put out to remind him of the lovely person that Diogo clearly was.
I suppose in some ways our son's reaction was specific to being a child experiencing the death of a public figure for the first time. In some ways though, it was still the same for me and probably lots of us: shock, bafflement, and, at unexpected moments, the sadness and emotions of it really hitting home.
