grief

A family reminisces while gathered together to make a panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of a beloved uncle.

The unexpected arrival of a flamboyant new neighbor teaches Alexandria that the loss of a loved one is a universal experience.

After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living.

While still grieving for her mother and unable to accept her stepmother, a girl clings to the memories represented by forty-three buttons on a string.

Thirteen-year-old Phoebe recalls the death of her younger brother Mick in a bicycle accident, which might not have been fatal had he been wearing his helmet, and how she and her family reacted to the tragedy. Closes with an appeal to bikers to wear protective bicycle helmets.

Twelve-year-old Mitch, spending the summer with his grandparents at Bird Lake after his parents' separation, becomes friends with ten-year-old Spencer, who has returned with his family to the lake where his little brother drowned years earlier, and as the boys spend time together and their friendship grows, each of them begins to heal.

Although Aunt Arlene tries to interest her in clothing and growing up, ten-year-old Mildred is entirely focused on growing a pumpkin big enough to win the annual Circleville, Ohio, contest, as her mother dreamed of doing before she died.

A boy asks others how they felt when his grandfather died, and then shares his own feelings.

Teenage Holland and her younger sister Geneva, having always lived under the shadow of siblings who died before they were born, struggle to establish separate identities and escape from the oppressive weight of their parents' continuing grief.

Wishing to be like his older but dead brother, who often materializes to give Wally advice and support, Wally enters a skateboarding competition and finally gains the confidence to be himself.