Befriending the North Wind : Children, Moral Agency, and the Good Death

The death of a child horrifies. We recoil at its mention. Images of dead or dying children impose themselves on our attention in ways that challenge us to change. Yet the topic of dying children is studiously avoided. When we do take notice, we paint children as victims, innocent of both blame and agency, passive in the face of suffering. Children die secluded in homes and hospitals, allowing society to carry on as though it were not happening.

Befriending the North Wind is about the moral lives of children and their agency in decisions about death. Our failure to be honest and open about the death of children hinders us from addressing their needs and confronting the sources of their suffering. This failure only adds to their suffering. Dying children often feel ignored, overlooked, and unable to exercise their agency to ameliorate their situation.

Befriending the North Wind presents a reconstruction of our understanding of human nature in light of the dimensions of human meaning that children reveal and the new horizons they open to us. It asserts that children can die a good death and that they can and should have a voice in their end-of-life care. This agency is grounded in their ability to make meaning, to act, to imitate, to use language creatively, to grasp a plurality of meanings, to reach judgments, to contribute to the meanings of others and to shape their understanding. Children are moral agents. We grown-ups need to humble ourselves and listen.