saying goodbye

I've had this idea to write on the topic of loss in a family for awhile now and there is no one way to answer the question ... how to talk to your kids about death. After reading here and there about lots of ways to talk/explain/console, I'm just going to put out there what we ended up doing and a few of my favorite articles about the subject. 

We had an uncle pass way before the holidays as well as two family pets and last week my husband's friend, who is only a few years older than us, suddenly passed. All have been hard on my kids in different ways and we explained what we thought is appropriate for them about each. My uncle they only knew from pictures, and we talked about how he had been sick for a few years fighting the cancer and visiting doctors to help him. The two pets were the animals my kids played with the most and it was a missing piece when they visited grandparents homes, so we talked about how that's what happens when you live a long life. For more talking points on grieving a pet, I found this post. 

Our friend they knew and we all hung out from time to time but he wasn't close with S & Z, but they have both heard us talking about the visitation and have seen me cry the last few days, asking what's wrong and why are you crying. This one has really hit close to home because it was so sudden and unbelievable, the thought of his wife and their newborn and will they be ok takes over my whole body, this is the first friend of ours who has passed away, I mean the majority of our group of friends are early-mid 30's. It also brings up questions of what we have in place if something happens and a sudden need to make sure all affairs are in order! With that panic, I headed over to What's Your Grief to calm my mind.

My responsibility to my children is to teach them and on this subject I feel there is no sugar-coating it. Nobody is "sleeping", the animals did not go to a farm, my kids are smart and life is not all rainbows and candy, so I feel a basic truth is what they can handle. There has been talk of heaven and their soul is in good hands free from any hurt, we have also told them the body just stops working when it is sick and can't fight anymore or has been around a long time (which then prompts the question, will gram gram die soon?!) I think my kids understand things more when it is plain and simple science explanation, when we talked about heaven, they kind of went off on a storyline like it was a pretend/imagination/movie, like they know Mike and Sully from Monsters Inc are not real it's just pretend and they don't really live behind the closet door in the monster world. I found myself referring back here for a checklist of points to make clear when talking about death.

But, every kid is different! Some might dwell on it and stay in their room, others might have lots of questions and you can see the gears in their head turning, others might just end the conversation and continue playing. It seemed like, for us, the questions were spread out and they took about a week each time to understand it, ask some more, come up with scenarios they had concerns about. It also helped that we have had a bit of conversation about death when it was about a squashed bug or a deer on the side of the road to ease into, in the years previous.
And now as I'm writing, we don't have any books that tackle the subject, so finding some good references at the library would be helpful to any child at any age! There are a few story books to get us started at Parents.com.

I also want to add a side note about how to help a grieving person. I feel if I were on the other side, these are words I would want to hear and actions that would truly help.

So, in the end, what I gather from all that I read, I did it right (yay parenting win!) when I talked briefly, plainly, and distinction between death and illness. I always let them know they can talk to us about anything and that there will be somethings that we just don't know, but we will figure it out together. 

THE TROUBLE IS, YOU THINK YOU HAVE TIME

xo