"My daddy died this week."

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When my music students come in to my lesson room, I generally say something like "are you ready to rock 'n" roll?" The students laugh and say "I'm ready." I then ask, "How was your week?" My students tend to be honest, and sometimes (but not that often) say things like, "It was a really stressful week." If my sense is that they could benefit from venting for a few minutes before we play music, I put my psychologist hat on, and do what we call "active listening" before I get us going the musical realm. My teenage guitar student said the above when I asked her how her week was, and I listened to her for fully five minutes before I got us going on some folk songs and Christmas carols. She is a Junior in high school and is starting to worry about AP classes and even college. She is taking Pre-Calculus, and I wound up telling her stuff about how I made calculus (which I did not take until college) relevant to my way of thinking. I encouraged her to talk to her teacher, and engage him or her in conversation. Then we worked on some songs. But I was not prepared for what a 7-year-old electric guitar student told me when I asked my generic question. He said what I have used as my title for this post. I did not know what to say. But I have encountered similar situations before in my work with kids. I said, "I am really sorry to hear that." But I did not show too much emotion. I wanted him to dictate how much we would talk about it, and how much we would play music. He told me that "his daddy had something in his body that made it hard for him to live." He tried to name it but could not. I said "that sounds like 'cancer.'" He said, "Yes, that's the word!" His eyes actually smiled. He then reminisced about some things he and his daddy had done recently, including a camping trip. I just listened. At one point I did say, "Don't be afraid to cry." He said, "I do sometimes." Finally, we got to work on a song he likes, called something like "Old Town Road" by some rapper and Billy Ray Cyrus, a one-hit-wonder Country musician. I wrote out some TAB (tabulature, I think it's called) for the melody. When I took him out to meet his Grandpa, on his mother's side, I said, "I am sorry for your loss." His Grandfather thanked me. What an odd evening.