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Little featured in Cleveland Plain Dealer
September, 2002
 09/03/02
''Learning to live with grief''
Terry Oblander
Plain Dealer Reporter
Eight years ago, Linnette Little gave birth to triplets.
Then she died.
And so did a big part of her husband's soul.
It took months of misery for Todd Little to discover the lessons grief had taught him. These lessons were learned in hospital rooms, in a funeral chapel and on top of his wife's grave at Dover Burial Park.
Today, Todd, 43, is a counselor who helps people deal with death and grieving.
The story of Linnette Little, who took fertility drugs and then died after giving birth to triplets, attracted national attention in 1994. Hundreds of people moved by Linnette's death sent gifts, money and promises of prayers to Todd.
He struggled to deal with the pain and the grief.
His parents, Don and June Little, took the triplets into their home, giving Todd time to heal.
For months, it was unclear which Todd Little would survive the tragedy - the social worker who helped troubled people or the tortured man who sat by his wife's grave for hours listening to tapes of her music and consumed by grief. She was a soprano who once dreamed of a career in music but settled for little-theater roles.
Little did not work for months.
''Grief was my work,'' he said. ''Grief and my kids. I knew that I needed to be around people, but I didn't want to be around people.
''I didn't have the heart to give the compassion I was always able to give. I didn't want to do anything that helped people.''
While the lawn sometimes grew out of control, Todd Little kept promises he had made to his wife.
He painted 20 chairs red, not just the few he had promised to paint, but failed to, when she was alive.
Todd Little knew he would have to go back to work, and the former drug and alcohol counselor landed a job as a social worker in a nursing home. That job wouldn't last long.
''A light bulb went off in my head: People die in this place,'' he said.
Caring for other people was just out of the question. Todd could barely care for Todd.
''I didn't care,'' he said. ''The care was just pulled out of me.''
He looked for a job doing just about anything else.
He applied to be a pizza driver and a night janitor at the YMCA. He didn't get the jobs. Employers would look at his resume and tell him he was overqualified.
''I thought if I can't get a night janitor job at the YMCA, I'm in trouble,'' he said.
Slowly, he began to understand himself and what he had been learning. The idea for a new career began to bud.
Todd was heavily involved in his wife's funeral at the Toland-Herzig Funeral Home in Dover. Before the wake, he arranged his wife's hair and painted her nails. He put together displays of pictures of Linnette that filled the funeral home, something that was rarely done there eight years ago, he said.
The funeral-home staff had become his friends, and they were open to his ideas about the home offering free grief counseling to their customers and others in the Dover-New Philadelphia area.
So, four years after Linnette's death, Todd sat down with three ''little old ladies'' - his first grief support group. Two women had lost husbands, and the third mourned the death of a son.
Todd Little became a student again.
''They taught me more than I taught them,'' he said.
Although mental-health agencies and other groups offer grief counseling, Todd Little says he is among a handful of counselors who are employed by a funeral home.
Todd's support group has become a social club with Christmas parties, picnics and outings to baseball games for the people who found friends with other grievers.
The triplets still live with their grandparents. Both Todd and his parents think it works better that way.
Todd says his parents are wonderful and much better at parenting than he could be. ''All three of us together make it more stable than most houses. We're so entwined, it's hard to tell where one of us starts and the other ends.''
Don Little, 68, said his son couldn't have done the job alone.
''There's no way he can raise them by himself and work,'' said the retired GTE employee. ''Who do you know who could work and take care of triplets at the same time?''
The triplets call Don Little ''Papa,'' but occasionally slip and call him ''Dad.'' Todd, who paid to have his parents' home enlarged to provide room for the triplets, eats with them every night, helps them with their homework and volunteers to help with the boys' baseball teams.
''My whole life is either working or trying to relieve the burden from my parents or being there for my kids,'' he said. ''I'm a dad. I try to be the best dad. I don't always hit the mark.''
Andrew, the oldest, is the rough and tumble guy who likes to make money. He once told his father ''I love you as much as money.''
''He's got such a love for life,'' Todd said. ''He can be into 15 things in a minute and a half.''
Taylor, the second oldest, is the most verbal and has become the family funny guy. ''He's kind of an amateur comedian,'' Todd says. ''He likes to tell a joke and then run it into the ground.''
Logan - perhaps the ''most thoughtful'' - is the guy who will laugh at all of Taylor's jokes no matter how bad. ''He's sweet and he's giggly,'' Todd said.
Todd says he doesn't dwell on marriage but could be open to the idea. Shortly after Linnette died, more than 100 women wrote to him proposing marriage. His children's broken bones and illnesses - and inevitable waiting-room conversations - have opened doors to romance.
''If my kids didn't get sick, I wouldn't have a social life at all,'' he said.
Who is Todd Little today?
Little says he understands himself better. And he knows that much of the grieving he did for Linnette was perfectly normal.
But there are still times that he feels like the man crying on his wife's grave.
''I think in a lot of ways I'm still that guy,'' he said. ''There are days I feel like a walking tragedy.''
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