Frida Backlund hopes new children’s book will help families talk losing loved ones

Frida Backlund, the wife of Calgary Flames alternate captain Mikael Backlund, penned a children's book in hopes of providing comfort and a tool to talk about loss

The loss of a loved one is a difficult thing to process at any age.

And explaining grief to children can bring on a whole new wave of emotion.

It’s a situation Calgary Flames alternate captain Mikael Backlund and his wife, Frida, have found themselves in as their kids, Tillie and Oliver, start to get a little older.

When four-year-old Tillie recently started asking questions about her maternal grandma, Frida paused.

She wasn’t ready to tell her daughter about the long, sleepless nights on a high school foreign exchange trip, frantically searching the internet for any explanation her mom Ann’s worsening illness wasn’t ALS.

Tillie wasn’t old enough to understand the devastation of Frida returning home and realizing just how quickly the disease had already progressed.

Or the pain of saying goodbye just three years after Ann’s diagnosis of the rare neurological disease also known as Lou Gherig’s Disease.