Loving Someone Who Never Did Grow Up (and Why You Might Stop Trying to Fix Them)

This one is not for us, for once. This one is for the people who love us. The husband whose wife lines up plush animals on the dresser. The daughter whose sixty-year-old mother started collecting stuffed bears. The friend who watches someone they care about grow softer, need more, ask for things that seem like they belong to a younger person. You love this person. You might also be confused. You might be worried. You might be trying to figure out whether you're supposed to fix this or accept this or something in between. I have been on both sides of this equation, and I want to tell you what I know.

I Was the One Who Needed the Soft Things

I was a nurse for over forty years. I was a military wife for twenty-one of them and a teacher's wife for the rest. I held people together. I was the one people called. And then Karl died, and I fell apart in ways I didn't know I could fall apart, and I became someone who needed things. Soft things. Small things. Things that didn't make sense from the outside.

I started buying stuffed animals. I put them around his photograph. A bear. A bunny. A duck in a raincoat. My children were kind about it. My grandchildren started trading plushies with me. My great-granddaughter taught me about clip-on animals you hook onto your purse. I have a purple octopus now. I am sixty-eight years old and I love that octopus more than I can explain.

If you had told me, ten years ago, that this would be my life, I would have been embarrassed. I would have said that's not me, I'm not that kind of person. But grief doesn't care what kind of person you think you are. Grief takes the armor off whether you're ready or not. And what's underneath the armor is just a person. A person who needs comfort. A person who found it in small soft things and stopped apologizing.

They Are Not Broken

Here is the thing I want you to hear most clearly. The person you love is not broken. They are not regressing in the way you might think. They are not falling apart. They are finding a way to hold themselves together, and that way happens to involve things that look childish from the outside. Stuffed animals. Comfort shows. Routines that seem rigid. Needs that seem disproportionate. This is not failure. This is coping. This is survival wearing a very soft coat.

Karl used to tease me about being the tough one. "Lydia," he'd say, "you could stare down a hurricane." He wasn't wrong. And then he died, and the hurricane came from inside me instead of outside, and I couldn't stare it down. I had to find other ways through. The stuffed animals were one of those ways. They still are. They're not a replacement for him. They are companions to his memory. They make the missing bearable. That's not weakness. That's wisdom. It just took me sixty-six years to learn it.

What They Need From You

They do not need you to fix them. They are not a problem to be solved. What they need, most of the time, is for you to stay. To not look at them differently. To not make the stuffed animals a conversation that ends in concern. They need you to trust that they know what they need, even if it looks strange. Even if you don't understand it. Even if it makes you worry.

My children never made me feel strange about the animals. My daughter came over one day and saw the bunny next to Karl's picture and just said, "That's nice, Mom, does the bunny have a name?" That was it. No lecture. No concerned look. Just acceptance. It meant more to me than anything she could have said.

You do not have to understand why they need what they need. You just have to believe them when they tell you they need it. You just have to be the person who doesn't flinch.

This Is Not a Phase

The softness might not go away. The stuffed animals might multiply. The routines might get more elaborate. This is not a phase they're going through. This is who they are now, or who they've always been underneath, finally allowed to show. You fell in love with the person underneath. That person is still there. They're just wearing softer clothes now. They're just carrying a clip-on octopus. They're just letting you see the parts they used to hide.

Karl fell in love with a twenty-two-year-old nurse who was very sure of herself and very bad at losing the first-drink competition at the bar where we met. I'm still that woman. I'm also the woman who talks to his photograph and rotates stuffed animals with the seasons and cries at the grocery store when I see the kind of cereal he used to like. Both of those women are me. Neither one is a problem to be solved.

Love them. Stay. Don't try to fix what isn't broken. And maybe, if you're feeling brave, buy them a little bear. They'll know what it means even if they can't say it. Especially if they can't say it.

— Lydia

About the Author

Lydia is a retired LPN and military wife who became a widow at 66. She lives in California, where she maintains a rotating seasonal collection of stuffed animals around her husband Karl's photograph. Her great-granddaughter recently taught her about clip-on plushies, and she hasn't looked back.