Dana Gutkowski
Latest posts by Dana Gutkowski (see all)
- How can I be a good aunt? - May 19, 2021
- Aunt Quotes - March 19, 2021
- End Your Silence. Support Black Lives Matter - June 29, 2020
Death is one of the great mysteries of life. It purposes a whole host of questions. Why does it happen to some so early in life? Why must it happen at all? What happens after you die? Is there an afterlife? Will I get to see my loved one again if I die?
The questions are endless and the answers are not universally definitive. You might be questioning how to do deal with these things yourself. And then add on top of that, how do you help children with their grief? How do you explain death to a child?
For me, unfortunately, I’ve been here before. I’ve lost several family members at various stages in my life and lost numerous dogs throughout the years. It never gets easier, but I’ve always been able to work through it. No matter if it’s a child, parent, grandparent, extended family member, or pet, I think we can all agree on one thing: death sucks. It leaves us feeling robbed. There’s now a piece of us missing. It hurts. It scars. And for better or worse, it turns us into different people.
My Experience With Grief:
The grandparents I never met
Most of the grief I had to experience was as an adolescent. I grew up with only one grandparent, my grandmother. I was always told stories about my father’s parents and my mother’s father, but never actually met them. My grandparents all died “before their time”. It was sad for me to grow up and see other kids with their grandparents, picking them up at the bus stop, coming to our school concerts, and graduations etc. I didn’t know what that was like. My grief was lack of grandparents. And the one grandparent I did have, my grandma lived too far away to make frequent visits, so I saw her mostly on holidays. Sad but not an uncommon story, unfortunately.
Uncle David
Even though I had the experience of grieving people I had never met and felt sad for my parents that they didn’t have their parents around. And I felt bad for myself because I wanted to know them – as grandparents and as people. I hadn’t known what it was like to lose someone close to me – yet. Fast forward to when I was 14, on Thanksgiving Day, I was told (the day he died) that my Uncle who had been living with us for close to a year was dying of AIDS. He was 40 years old. Talk about shock.
How did it feel? Like someone had reached into my body and was squeezing both of my lungs with all of their might. I was instantly fatigued, out of breath and powerless. The emotional pain was indescribable and one that had never felt before. I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. He had moved across the country about a month before his passing. I guess he knew it was time and didn’t want to be around anyone when the day came.
I didn’t even know he was terminally ill. My parents had lied to me and my siblings (I guess to protect us) and said that he was sick with other things but never lead on to the fact that he was actually slowly dying. And I believed them because I had no reason to question my parents at that point.
Grandma
My next significant run-in with death was when I was 19. I had just finished my freshman year of college, moved back home for the summer, and about a week later my grandmother passed away from cancer. This one was different. I knew that it was coming. My parents again had sheltered me from the initial truth that she had cancer, but as the years progressed, it came out that this was her second bought of breast cancer, and this time the outlook was grim.
I grieved my grandmother’s passing while she was still alive. I knew that each time I saw her, while she was living with us and ultimately while she laid in her hospital bed that it could be the last time I saw her. For me, her passing was more graceful, but still too soon. She was 75 years old at the time.
Dad
Next comes the hardest one of all. I was 31, living in New York with my father. I went down to Maryland to visit my sister for her Birthday. We spent the day celebrating by going to get massages, manicures and pedicures. It was a girls day of pampering courtesy of my brother in law and it felt great. It had been a while since my sister had any time alone without children so we were savoring the calmness.
Later that night my sister and I decided to continue our day of bonding and laughter by watching some T.V. Everyone else was fast asleep but we were up giggling together like little kids. At 12:25 AM her caller ID lit up on the TV screen. It was my brother, my face scrunched thinking that it might be a butt dial because it was an odd time to be calling…and he was calling the house number, not anyone’s cell phone.
My sister picked up the phone and said “what? what? I can’t understand you slow down.” That’s when she started screaming and jumping up and down, but not in a good way.
I rushed to my sister and said “what’s going on?!” That’s when she turn around and screamed “Dad’s dead!”
I was in immediate denial. “No, no no no” was all I could say. There must have been a mistake, someone must be able to do to something. My father couldn’t be gone.
Everything else from that moment forward is a blur. I cried for hours, which turned to days and then weeks and months. It was a nightmare that I couldn’t wake myself up from. Even when I managed to sleep a little, I’d wake up thinking that it was all a bad dream, but it wasn’t. The bad dream was my new reality. My Dad died from a heart attack at 60 years old.
My life changed forever that day. But it wasn’t just me I had to tend to. Now I had four children – my two nieces, my nephew and my another one on the way who we would now have to explain to that Pop Pop / Uncle Mitch was no longer with us. Dealing with death and the pain that it brings is hard enough. For me, it’s as if someone took a dull knife and stabbed me in the heart. But then having to tell break the news to others is more like if I removed the knife only to then stab myself again and again. I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s agonizing, but it’s necessary.
How To Help Kids Deal With Death
When someone whom you have a close relationship dies, the explanation and of death the grieving process doesn’t all fall of the parents’ shoulders. Kids will have questions and they won’t only be asking their parents, they’ll be asking anyone that they feel close to. They’ll need honesty, comfort, and stability for everyone around them.
1.) Protect them but don’t lie
Explaining death to children is very hard, especially when as adults it’s hard concept to grasp. Nonetheless, they should know what has happened. Sit them down in a calm environment to let to tell them. How the news is broken to them will last a long time, if not forever.
Example: “A very sad thing happened today. Pop Pop died. He’s not with us anymore. He’s now in heaven.” This can obviously be adjusted to coincide with your spiritual and religious beliefs. They may or may not understand what that means, especially if this is the first time that this has come up. When we told my niece Layla about my Dad she responded with “Well, how did he get there? His car is still here.” It gets tricky and their responses might make you cry, laugh, or cry harder. None of those responses are wrong.
I try my hardest to be strong in front of the kids, but if they see me crying, I don’t hide it. I’m honest with why I’m crying. I’m sad.
2.) Try to explain how the person died as simply as possible
You can say to an adult, my father passed away from a heart attack and they immediately get it. The conversation ends there in terms of cause of death. For kids, it’s not so simple. Heart attack doesn’t mean the same thing to them.
This is how we explained it to the kids. “Pop Pop’s heart got sick and it couldn’t get better. You need your heart for everything, to breathe, walk, talk, blink your eyes, chew your food, etc. If your heart gets sick and stops working, you can’t do those things anymore and that’s happened to Pop Pop. His heart stopped working.” It’s not the best explanation, but it’s not the worst either. And that’s what you have to shoot for.
3.) Answer their questions
Know that kids will have questions and they’ll continue throughout their life. Allow them to express how they feel, answer their questions to the best of your ability, and always be honest. If you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know, but this is how you think or feel about it.
No matter what you tell them, they’ll have follow-up questions. The purpose of telling them is so that their mind doesn’t wander. You don’t want them to come up with a worse scenario in their heads or think that the death had anything to do with their actions.
Consistency and honesty are the two most important factors. If your belief system is different from that of their parents, for the purposes of speaking to kids, stick to whatever the parents are telling them. Death is confusing enough without hearing conflicting truths.
4.) Keep The Memory Of Your Deceased Love One Alive
I’ll write a whole other post on ways to keep the memory of someone you lost alive, but for now, make it a point to talk about them. Just because they aren’t with you now physically, doesn’t take away from all the times that you were together. Every person is eternal in our memories.
One of the hardest things for me to deal with when it comes. to death is all the things that my Grandma, Uncle, and Father have missed out on. It’s fun to hypothesize about how they would have reacted, and everyone coming up with their own ideas, but it’s still tough knowing that no one will ever really know what the true outcome would be.
Talking about someone you lost while you’re in initial grieving stages helps, especially if you’re sharing the good times. Between all the sobbing and tears, you need breaks of laughter. It’s what makes the unbearable bearable even if just for a moment.
