WHAT DO WE SAY TO THEIR CHILDREN?
Some of the 17 children of the victims of last weekend’s shooting in Quebec are so young they can barely comprehend the loss of a parent
WENDY GILLIS QUEBEC— The school bus turned onto a snowy Ste-Foy cul-de-sac just after 3 p.m., coming to a stop in front of an apartment building.
Ali eyed its opening doors from the front lobby, where he was saying goodbye to a stream of visitors who had come to give their condolences. “His girls are home,” he said. Two days had passed since the children, 12 and 10, were told, with the help of a psychologist, that their father was dead. Abdelkrim Hassane, 41, was among six victims of a fatal shooting inside Quebec City’s largest mosque just a few minutes’ drive away. In the family’s apartment upstairs, Hassane’s widow was caring for their youngest daughter, a 15-month-old baby.
The girls are among 17 children who no longer have fathers — men who were killed where the families worship.
On Wednesday, Hassane’s eldest girls went to school as the family’s support network, led by Ali — Hassane’s friend of 23 years, who asked to be identified by first name only — busily arranged the logistics of the coming days. Funeral in Montreal first. Burial in Hassane’s home country of Algeria after that.
His cellphone rang every other minute, his voice low and solemn. Dark circles around his eyes betrayed a sleepless night at the hospital Sunday, where he learned Hassane was killed moments after the men had waved goodbye to each other at the mosque, Ali leaving, Hassane lingering.
But as the girls stepped off the bus, clomping in big boots up to the door, frizzy curls poking out of their toques, he transformed.
“Girls, you’re home!” he called out to them excitedly, putting on a grin as he propped open the door and ushered them upstairs.
He knows he can only distract them from their grief for so long.
“When the apartment is empty, when no one is coming and going, that’s when they’ll feel the absence of their father,” he said.