JP Moms on How to Talk to Children About Death

This week's topic is: How do you talk to children about death?

Children's grief does not always manifest itself in the ways we — as adults — might expect.

My mother died of lung cancer two years ago. I received the phone call from the UK in the early hours of the morning and sat waiting for my children to wake up dreading breaking the news to them of the loss of their grandmother. However when I told my children, the eldest (then 8 years old) said “that is sad”, the youngest (aged 4) didn’t comment at all and the 6 year old said “Oh…..So what are we doing today mummy”?” And that was it. Not one of my three children cried or seemed to go through any sort of period of grief. Or so I thought…

Over the next three months my middle child’s behavior spiraled out of control. She reverted to tantrums, made a fuss each morning about going to school, cried and sulked for no apparent reason. That summer we took our children to Norway to stay with their paternal grandmother. One day during this visit we were all picking blueberries. My daughter sat on the ground crying and refusing to join in. I took her in my arms and asked her if she could tell me why she was so sad. Her response still makes me cry. “I didn’t want to visit Norway. I wanted to go to England and decorate gran’s grave.” This was her first and only reference to my mother’s death. Those words made me realize how wrong I had been to believe that children do not grieve. Children clearly do grieve but that grief does not always manifest itself in the ways we — as adults — might expect.

My children did not attend my mother’s funeral. Perhaps this was a mistake? Perhaps they too needed a sense of closure?

When we returned to Boston I decided to have a small memorial service for my mother-something that my children could understand and participate in. Each of them wrote a letter to their grandmother and drew a picture. We attached these to balloons and then took them to the top of Peter’s Hill in the Arboretum. One by one we released the balloons and watched them drift off across the sky. It was a moving moment -one that I hope they will always remember….

: Children look to the adults around them for cues on how to behave.

My son, Sam, graduated from high school on May 20; A huge milestone for him and for our family, and there were two, ever-present beings, who weren’t there — both his grandmothers.  They were his cheerleaders and two women that he loved who thought the world of him and were very proud of him.  There was little talk about it.  But when we had five invitations we were at a loss as to who to invite. They were his closest relatives outside our immediate family and they died within 6 months of each other this past year and we always expected them to be here.   My husband’s mother, Kitty, was almost 90 and we had prepared for the reality that she would die sooner than later. My mother, Diana, was 69 and we didn’t expect an illness to come and take here away; we were lucky,  we had about three months of watching and waiting her slip away and both my children got to say “goodbye” to her.   

Children look to the adults around them for cues on how to behave. No doubt they have strong feelings of loss, but our sense of what “death” is and how we mourn will affect the children around you.  I was/am very close to my mother-  she and I shared spiritual beliefs. I believe those beliefs have rubbed off on my children.  I think the biggest mistake we can make is to not talk about death and dying.  When my mother was dying, my younger son, Caleb, came into the kitchen where I was crying and said, “oh, mom, grandma’s a tough bird, she’ll get through this” and I looked at him and said, “oh, no, honey, grandma’s dying, she isn’t going to get better and we need to tell her we love her and spend time with her now.”  I had to explain what was happening to her that she was dying from an expanding aneurysm and her brain would eventually shut everything down. He started to tear up as well.  I brought Caleb to the Armenian Nursing home on Moss Hill in JP, where my mother was spending her last month of life. That was probably the most difficult because as she died her ability to interact was disappearing and it was hard for Caleb to interact like he had, but he got to see the process and was understanding that her quality of life was disappearing and we all believed that life wasn’t what she wanted and that death would be a welcome alternative. My mother slipped into a coma for her last 5 days. During that time, I brought both boys in and said that they needed to take a moment alone, that it is proven that people can hear everything when they are in a coma and that they could tell her they love her and anything else they wanted to say and she would hear it.  It was just the 4 of us in the room, my mother, me and my two sons, and Caleb (11 at the time) began talking to her, “well, Grandma, I know it’s been tough” somehow my older son, Sam and I found that to be very funny and burst into laughter, I suppose because it was an understatement. Now you might say that wasn’t very kind and certainly made Caleb self-conscious about what he was saying (and we did quickly apologized to Caleb for our insensitivity) but we did send a message that it didn’t have to be so serious. We quickly left the room and said, “please, have some privacy and say what you want and need to.”  Each boy took their time and said what they needed to and that was the last time they saw her.  She died two days later.  We told stories about my mother, we laughed and cried at her funeral and we danced at her party. We celebrated her life while we said goodbye.

My children, like most, had their own private times of sadness and grieved alone and I think it is important to share your own grief with them so they see that we can share that sadness together but allowing them some private time to feel their sadness and allow them the freedom to feel without needing to interact with someone else. I offered them opportunities to share their sadness when I shared my feelings.

 The other day I noticed that Sam had drawn some initials on his arm in big red letters. I hadn’t paid attention to exactly what it was he had written and I said, “What is that?”  He pointed out the letters, “KJH” and said Grandma Kitty’s initials.  It was for a big game and he put the initials of people who were near and dear to help his team win a game.  And he said, “I put Grandma Diana’s initials on my heart” and he showed me the initials on his chest.  

Death is a part of life, we try and stress that aspect in our family life, we have lost pets, beloved brothers, now parents, and our children have watched us grieve and are now learning how to grieve. 

Children grieve, they have a sense of loss for a toy, the balloon that escapes their hands, a moment in time, a pet,  a death of someone they didn’t even know but who was part of the community, a distant relative, and a close relative-  all different levels of grieving and baby steps to understanding that we don’t have everything forever and we must appreciate what is here.  I think the balloon is an opportunity to share understandings of loss; don’t let that first opportunity get away.