My son asked my wife and I today if we are going to die. Kind of a heavy conversation for a little boy.
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"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx
Wild that he is asking at such a young age. I wonder what prompted it? Could be school, could be TV. His goldfish died a couple of weeks ago.
Wild that he is asking at such a young age. I wonder what prompted it?
My parents never talked to us about death, not even when my grandmother died. Or even when a cousin shot himself to death in the front parlor of our house when I was in the fifth grade (yes, that really happened). I had never been to a funeral until I was in my twenties and my then husband’s grandmother died. It was a huge Catholic funeral, with the body laid out in the corner and people standing around chatting as if they were at a party. Um, excuse me, but there’s corpse in the corner over there.
Wish my parents hadn’t have ignored the issue. Might have saved me from many nights as a child, awake at night and freaked out about the thought of the moment when I would take my last breath. But then again, maybe not.
It is not an easy question, but it can successfully be handled. One of my grandmothers died last year. Following her death we found a book that was designed to help children understand and cope with death.
So when my son brought this up read the book together and talked about what it means. And that seemed to work for him.
But it wasn’t easy listening to him ask us not to die. I was torn about whether to completely lie and say it won’t happen or whether I should be really honest.
Since he is so little I hedged a little and reminded him that Abba’s parents are still around and that he has 4 great-grandparents so he shouldn’t worry about this. It worked yesterday, we’ll see if it comes back up again.
Wow. Makes me realize how unready I am to answer that question. What did you say?
My daughter has been asking about it a lot, too. I’m not quite sure she understands what it means, because she seems to think that it isn’t final. I think she confuses it with being sick.
And the sad thing is that each time the Pres. is on TV she asks, “Did someone die?” because she remembers me watching Reagan’s funeral and telling her that a Pres. died. So she associates presidents w/death now.