Talk to your children about death

[caption id="attachment_6243" align="alignright" width="288"] Christian cross - a symbol use as a marker and memorial of those who died[/caption]

Carol Forsloff — Grandma died, and the funeral is Saturday.  How do you explain death and dying to a child?

During the time when American was a rural society, with many families living in close proximity to one another, folks were close enough to each other to share in the process of helping the dying, working with family members who needed assistance in the grieving process, and generally sharing the responsibilities of preparing the body for its final disposition.

We have all seen those old movies of the child at Granny's casket, that child putting a hand in to touch the body at the encouragement of some family member. We have also seen those same movies use the scene to underline the trauma someone can experience when death and dying are handled in ways that children might not understand.

So it's important to prepare a child for death and dying. And when is the right time?  The answer is as it is for many things, as the child is able to understand. That understanding, however, can at least be fostered very early in a child's life.

Children see nature, outside where animals and plants live and where there are many opportunities to visit living things. That life is part of the understanding that children need to have when it comes to dealing with death.

One of the barriers in talking to children about death is the fear adults have of the process and in dealing with the topic themselves.

So the process is early for the child and regularly for an adult, something that needs to be revisited perhaps many times during one's lifetime.

Many people speak of a life hereafter, of the continuation of life in some form, a heaven, the recreation of a soul, the gathering of loved ones in some heavenly kingdom on earth or in heaven. The visions of life after death are numerous, often individualized according to one's life experiences. Yet that full comprehension, knowing and conversation is often not part of what happens in daily life, but only when someone dies. That is too late to begin the process of helping young people learn about death.

As we face our own mortality, the first step in helping our children, we need to examine our fears and prejudices and at the same time reflect on what we already know about the process of dying. What we know is that life is continuous in some way. Plants live, offer seeds to the ground that regenerate and repopulate. The bones of animals become one with the soil. Then there is the pattern of how one life form interacts with one another, and how interdependent those life forms can be.

The process of dying continues to be a point of controversy among those who relate it in terms of their religion and those who explain it in terms of science.  And how people deal with dying varies according to one's culture.  Yet there is a consistency in all cultures that remains.  That consistency is the lack of preparation of the living to understand the process of dying.

Some who have actually watched people die have narrated the experience. And those who are scientists and have made observations of the dying process tell us certain things occur, with various body systems shutting down, not simultaneously, but in a certain order, with the ability to hear and feel among the last of those systems before the end of breath. So one can hold the loved one and speak to him or her, and the child may offer consolation and at the same time learn about death, so long as proper preparation and explanation is given and a level of maturity and understanding achieved. Grandma hears what people say almost until she draws her last breath.

Watching how these life forms are in our world is something simple, yet complex, but that allows the understanding of life on many levels. For the child it is seeing the flowers live, fold their petals, die, some reborn in the same pot, or seemingly reborn, seeds that have dropped on the ground, and the observation of new life developing. So as we speak of how babies are in their mothers' wombs, so it is with all living things, a life within that is a mystery in many ways, and a life that may come, in some form, after a person dies.  For when we explain the joy of new life to a young child, that new baby that has arrived in the family home, and those questions are posed about how babies are made, is a good time to talk about the continuity of life itself.  That continuity is at both ends, life's beginning and its end, both with the understanding there is some form of experience that occurs before birth and a process of dying as well.

For even doctors and other scientists agree that death is a process, and that process is something science is understanding in relative little bits for the vast information still yet to know. But there is a process and the preparation for it should be as thoughtfully considered as the preparation for that new baby. In that way the child sees the wholeness of life, is comforted in some way by it.

Granny isn't just asleep. Her life becomes part of something else, somewhere else, as part of the process of life that goes on. That truth is something for all of us to hold, as we face our own mortality and explain it to our children.

The more the dying are kept distant from the living the less the family understands about the process of dying and the lonelier it becomes. By acknowledging that process early enough, and preparing children, we begin to know how we feel, how our children feel and help the dying become part of the community of all of us, so that they continue to teach us about life as we prepare for our own death and those of our children.