死亡教育Learning about death

Bridge to Terabithia was the first English novel I read in secondary school—not the first English book I had ever read, but somehow the one that marked the beginning of a new stage of reading for me. And what a welcoming gift it was: grief.

For most of the book, Terabithia feels almost invincible. Jesse and Leslie invent an entire kingdom in the woods, accessible only by swinging across the creek on a rope. Reality can be unpleasant, but imagination always seems to offer another exit. Then one day the rope breaks. Leslie falls, hits her head, and drowns. That’s it. I remember being genuinely unable to process this. What do you mean she just died? She was one of the protagonists. Surely protagonists were supposed to have some sort of narrative immunity.

Instead, the rest of the novel leaves Jesse—and the reader—with grief. His reaction was probably my first encounter with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What stayed with me, though, was how disorderly grief actually looked. Jesse does not politely complete one stage and proceed to the next. He refuses to believe Leslie is dead, gets angry, runs away from the fact, and has thoughts that are selfish and irrational precisely because grief is selfish and irrational.

Perhaps that was the first time a book taught me that accepting death does not mean making it meaningful. Leslie does not come back, and Terabithia cannot undo what happened. Jesse eventually builds a bridge across the creek and carries their imaginary kingdom forward. The loss remains; he simply learns how to cross it.