Hard news for a 5-year-old

If I had read the obituary without knowing how well it captured Kamryn Bailey, it still would have broken my heart.

"Kamryn [age 6] was a beautiful young lady who loved everyone she met. ... She will always be remembered for her singing, dancing, princess lunches, catching fireflies, and always having a beautiful smile. She was a sassy diva who enjoyed accessorizing with her big sunglasses and flashy jewelry."

Heartbreaking to any reader.

But I was lucky enough to know Kamryn. She was a classmate of my youngest son, Franklin. And he was in love with her.

All the boys were, I'm told. But for Franklin, it was a first.

I remember how he wore a suit -- yes, a suit -- to her birthday party at a bowling alley at the beginning of March.

He had hand-lettered a special card and had painstakingly wrapped her presents, including a small red Plexiglas heart.

When I attended Kamryn's visitation last week, her mom was grasping that heart.

Kamryn died following a severe asthma attack. Active, entertaining the world one day; gone the next. I can't imagine what poor Kamryn's parents and other loved ones are going through.

The visitation and the funeral the following day were horrific and beautiful.

I sobbed my way through one. My husband sobbed his way through the other.

The events also raised questions many of Kamryn's friends' parents, including us, hadn't had to address before.

How do you tell a child of 5 that one of his friends -- one of his peers -- has, unexpectedly, passed away?

Until now, we could get away with the blessed subterfuge that people die when they are old and sick.

But a little girl, a beautiful vibrant girl barely a week out of kindergarten?

How to explain that?

Momentarily, I considered shielding him entirely. This sort of news is hard enough to hear as an adult.

But Franklin is no dummy. He'll be going back to school in the fall. And kids talk.

Also, my husband recalled how deeply affected he was by the deaths of two of his elementary school friends in separate car accidents.

He said he would have felt so betrayed not to have known what happened to them.

I imagine Franklin will remember Kamryn with a similar clarity.

As we were grappling with the loss to our school community, some parents also raised the question of whether children should attend the visitation or the funeral.

Like Harry, I relied upon a vivid childhood memory to guide me.

I can still remember so clearly attending the funeral Mass of a girl in another grade, a girl I knew only by sight, who attended my Catholic elementary school. The raw pain etched in the features of that girl's father remain with me to this day. He was, quite simply, destroyed.

It was one of the first moments when I understood, outside the daily give and take of my own family, how much parents love their children.

In the end, my husband and I determined that Franklin was not yet old enough to experience that sort of raw emotion.

We wanted to shelter him, if only temporarily, from the kind of pain I saw in the eyes of Kamryn's parents.

If only we could save every child from the reality of that kind of pain. If only we could save every Kamryn.