Dealing with Loss

In Getting Near to Baby, the author demonstrates through the story's characters the various ways in which people deal with tragic loss. When two-year-old Joy Ellen Dean—called merely Baby by her family—dies unexpectedly from drinking contaminated water, her close family members all have different ways in which they deal with the tragedy that has cruelly been inflicted upon them. Noreen, the young mother, is holding Baby when she dies. She is watching the sunrise at the time and associates the dawning day with her daughter's death. Noreen is an artist and after the death of her child, she becomes obsessed with painting pictures of Baby happy and smiling with the angels or depicting the angels holding back the clouds at sunrise so that Baby can enter heaven.

Baby's seven-year-old sister, Jo Ann—called Little Sister by her family—literally stops...