So LL e-mailed a link to an CNN article involving the need to explain death to children and the inherent perils involved in those conversations.
As a parent - particularly as one who is pursuing a career in the funeral industry - these questions come up in my household frequently. I do my best to answer but it’s delicate ground and difficult to know how to set my kids on a path toward acceptance (even if it is a reluctant acceptance) of death without needlessly scaring them. I want to be honest, but how much can you divulge before your kids become overloaded? How do you put a child’s mind at ease regarding a topic that most adults refuse to cope with?
For instance, last night my son and I were in Target when, out of the blue, he began asking me questions. The problem is that because of the career path I have chosen the boy has already tackled and compartmentalized the easy questions regarding funerals and how we treat the bodies of our loved ones when they die and has since moved on to the more existential end of things. He asks me stuff like:
What makes us move and talk and think made of and what happens to it when we die? Can it die too? Is this what our spirit is?
- I tell him that our faith teaches us that we do have an immortal soul that persists after death.
What does heaven look like?
- I have maintained that I don’t know. Now, if you really want to frighten an eight year old then simply concede that you don’t know something, especially where it involves death. I still wrestle with this one because it’s the truth; I don’t know. Still, the notion that his mom doesn’t have all the answers has caused the poor kid a lot of stress.
Will we see your Gramma Springer when we get there?
- No, she’s probably somewhere else. (Ok, I kid, I don’t really tell him that.)(Miss you Gramma.)
Who’s going to take care of me when you die?
- I remember being about his age and having an overwhelming fear of my parents dying, so when he asks I drop everything and give him my full attention before assuring him that I’m not going to die for a long, long time and he won’t die for a long time after that.
Are you sad that you’re going to die someday?
- I also try to explain that while I’m not skipping for joy at the inevitability of my own death I have learned to accept it and use that eventuality as motivation to live as good a life as I can.
Can we control our own spirit?
- The question about being able to control our own spirit is getting a lot of play in our household these days. My son is preoccupied with the notion that he will die and his soul will fall into the hands of a malfeasant supernatural being that will use him to hurt others. I have tried to pry the source of this idea out of him and have been left with nothing more than a suspicion that he’s heard about Paris Hilton’s latest heap of garbage. Then I remind him that our faith teaches us that there isn’t some beastly supernatural being lying in wait to snatch our souls.
If Papa and Gramma are in heaven then why are we sad?
- Because we miss them. Just because death is normal and natural doesn’t mean that we don’t sorely miss those who have died before us and feel the pain of their absence.
…and the questions go on and on and on and rarely stop before I’ve had hours during which I regret ever entertaining the notion that I was equal to the task of this parenting thing. However, in between the time that the questions start and my kids are satisfied that they have intellectually bloodied me, they seem to have picked up something that I hope will serve them well when considering their own mortality; the concept of continuity and their place in the larger scheme of things.
At the age of eight I think my son is just starting to grasp the notion that he is but the latest link in a long chain that stretches into the past behind every one of us:
“Mom. Maybe it won’t be so bad since your Gramma Springer is there with daddy’s papa and gramma and they can be with us when we die.”
Then he asked if I would buy him a candybar and promplty forgot about the whole thing. And I realized that maybe I should stop worrying so much about ruining my children.
“We won’t be going in there alone… I meant my ancestors. I will call into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come and help me… at the judgement. I will reach back and draw them into me. And they must come, for at this moment, I am the whole reason they have existed at all.”