Mommy Mondays: Kids and Death

2 weeks ago, one of my childhood friends lost her fight against cancer.  It was, as would be expected, very upsetting for me.  And I did my best to keep my sorrow from my children, as an unnecessary burden they need not shoulder.

But sometimes we don't have the luxury of keeping death from them.  When Thatkid was 19 months old, TFIL died.  He attended his first funeral before he reached the age of two.  Of course, at 19 months, there wasn't much to explain or discuss with him. 

But when he was 3, my grandmother died.  And a month later, my cousin died.  By then, he was old enough to understand.  To an extent.  Do any of us REALLY understand death?  He was, at least, old enough to ask questions and to try and formulate thoughts regarding funerals and the inability to see someone again.

Discussions of death aren't really something most of us prepare for.  When you have children, you know at some point you will need to sit them down and talk to them about the "birds and the bees" but we never really think about the fact we will also need to talk to them about death. 

My own experiences definitely color my own views of death.  When I was 3 years old, my babysitter was in a car accident and died.  That same year, a child in my preschool died.  And a year later, my grandfather died.  Before I was 6, I'd been to more funerals than many people had in their lifetime.  So for me, I felt like I understood the best way to talk to Thatkid, because I had been in his shoes before. 

I don't think there's a right or wrong way to have this discussion, so take my "dos" and "don't" with a grain of salt.  They're not gospel, just things I found helpful.

DO tailor the discussion to the child's age/ability.  Like I mentioned above, we didn't feel the need to have any discussion with Thatkid before he was two.  And the way we spoke about it with him at 3 would not be the way we would have discussed it with him when he was older.

DON'T blame death on old age entirely.  This is a really common thing.  And it is easy to fall back on, because death is a big thing children fear.  Especially involving their parents.  And it's comforting to reassure them that you're not going to die for a long long long long time.  I stumbled upon this advice inadvertently.  My grandmother died from suspected lung cancer, so when she died, we told Thatkid it was because she got really sick, instead of blaming her age.  And when my 30 year old cousin died the following month, I realized I was glad I hadn't told him that grandma died because she was old. 

DO let them lead the conversation.  No need to bring up issues they haven't even thought of yet.  For Thatkid, the three big concerns, all of which are really related to each other, were "What makes people die?" " "What happens after you die?" and the fear that Thatboy and I were going to die.    There's no right or wrong answer to these, and your own personal beliefs and experiences will color your answers, but this is how we handled it:

- What makes people die?  We told Thatkid that you die when the body stops working.  There are three main reasons the body stops working - it gets too broken, too sick, or too old.  This led to a whole host of discussions about how the body works, how blood works, how blood gets outside the body and a lot of other biology questions, but as I stated above, we let him lead those conversations and answered as honestly and age appropriately as we could.

- What happens after you die?  We told Thatkid that nobody knows for sure what happens after you die, because once you die, you don't come back and tell people.  So lots of people have ideas about what happens, and those ideas make those people feel better.  We talked about heaven, about reincarnation, about ghosts and the afterlife, and that some people just believe that nothing happens after you die.  And we told him that whatever makes him feel good, that's what he should believe. 

- Fear of death.  I really think this is the crux of death conversations with kids.  And maybe not just kids.  As I stated above, we told him that you die when the body stops working, but we also told him the body is really really really good at fixing itself.  That's why he has been sick, or hurt himself, and was still perfectly healthy today.  We told him that we all try to take really good care of ourselves, to help stay healthy - making good food choices, not running across the street, driving carefully, taking medicine when we get sick - all the kinds of things that help keep us alive for a long long long long time.   

I won't lie, Thatkid was preoccupied with death for a good long time after those back to back funerals, and all the questions.  But I think that's probably true for a lot of subjects with young children.  And in the intervening years when death has hit close to home, he seems to have less concerns and questions.