Kids & Death: How to Answer the Questions
In which we begin a series on relating death and grief to children
Editor’s Note: This is the first edition of my Kids & Death series, which will run on alternating weeks for the next couple of months. Eventually, I’ll add all of these posts to a tab at the top of the page. If you have questions, ideas of topics to explore in this area or anything else you’d like to share, reply to this email or send me a note at jaredpaventi@substack.com. Now, on with our show…
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.
— A prayer from the New England Primer
The New England Primer was the first reading book printed specifically by the crown for the colonists in the 17th century. The Puritans loved death, obsessing over it as a mighty tool of God that was both punishment and reward1:
The vision of death and the act of ding were to the Puritans profoundly religious matters. Much of the average Puritan’s life was centered about and predicated on the vision of death, the afterlife, and the expected manner in which the passage from this world to the next should be made.
It’s not a wonder that the prayer at the beginning of this entry would enter our American lexicon as acceptable to lay at the feet of children to recite before going to bed:
Now I lay me down to sleep (I’m on the precipice of a nap anytime during daylight hours, so I feel this.)
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. (I can dig it. Christians have somewhere to go and they are certain of the destination.)
If I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take. (No concern about a good night’s sleep or a healthy crop or for those damn natives not to attack us at night. Nope. If I die, come by and pick me up.)
It’s Biblical Rock-a-Bye Baby, the horrendous nursery rhyme about a baby falling to its death from the top of a tree. What do these have in common? Children have been taught to recite them both for years and with absolutely zero regard for how the topic of death might be interpreted or internalized.
The conversation about kids and death isn’t an easy one and it certainly won’t be solved in one edition. We’re going to start the discussion talking about how my kids have encountered the topic.
When it clicks…
If your kids are like mine, the concept of death first came about with bugs. My daughters loved stomping on ants in the driveway or on the patio. “Mommy, I deaded the ants,” my gleeful youngest child would say while stomping away like she was an extra in Starship Troopers2.
That was about it for them. We would tell the kids if we were going to a wake or funeral, but it didn’t really click with them if they didn’t know the person. For each of them, death wasn’t really real until this last June when their grandfather passed away.
My oldest is smarter than she lets on. She figured out early that Grandma Anne was also Mommy’s mother and that Papa was Mommy’s father. She knew Grandpa Paul was my father but she couldn’t quite make the connection on how Grandma Linda wasn’t my mother. It was like her little preschool/kindergarten brain hadn’t quite fired up those neurons yet. My wife and I decided to let this go until she figured out how to ask the question:
“If Grandma Linda isn’t your mother, then who is?”
We spent a few minutes with her discussing how my mother died a long time ago (at this point about 20 years had gone by) and that Grandpa Paul got married again. We showed her pictures of her, as a baby, at their wedding; of Paul and Linda holding her after she was born; and of them at her birthdays. Then, I got out an old photo album and showed her pictures of my mother. She quickly lost interested when she saw what my sister and I looked like as kids.
My youngest hasn’t really put it together yet and, again, we’re not pushing it. Linda is her grandmother and that’s what matters. We will get there when she is ready.
For all of the articles out there about talking to kids about death, few discuss how we should talk about relatives who died before the kid was born. Most of them are by the brilliant Eleanor Haley from What’s Your Grief. Becoming a Parent After the Death of a Parent is poignant and aligns with some of the thoughts I had when our first child was born.
Michelle DuBarry confronts a similar topic for Modern Loss, as she reveals what she tells her children about their sibling, who perished in a car accident when he was 22 months old. It gets closer to the mark.
It wasn’t until they were almost four that Gus finally asked, “Mommy, where is Seamus?” We were having dinner, sitting underneath the collage of Seamus pictures that hangs over our kitchen table. I took a deep breath and said, “Seamus is dead.”
If you’ve spent time with three-year-olds, you know that they never stop moving. Even when they eat, even when they sleep. But at that moment, the wiggling abruptly ceased. Even my husband stopped eating. He looked at me as if to say, “We’re doing this now?”
“What is dead?” Greta asked.
“It’s when your body stops working,” I answered.
“Like a bug?” Gus asked.
I cringed, not wanting them to think of a person being smooshed like an ant.
“Kind of,” I said.
Their bodies frozen in place, they looked between me and my husband with eyes wide as their understanding of the world and their family shifted beneath them.
“Does that make you feel sad?” I asked.
They nodded in unison. Greta’s eyes filled with tears but she didn’t cry.
“It’s OK to feel sad. Daddy and I are sad every day. We miss Seamus so much. We wish you could have met him.”
Silence.
Had I gone too far?
“Do you have any more questions about Seamus?” I asked.
“No,” Greta said, and Gus shook his head no.
They resumed fidgeting and tapping. We moved on to other topics (What are boogers made of? Why don’t skyscrapers have chimneys? What happens when hot lava touches a rainbow?) We’ve since filled in some of the details, but only when they ask.
Detour…
My father’s mother died in 1973, before my parents were married.3 My grandfather remarried fairly quickly to the woman I knew as Grandma Josie a year later. Josie wasn’t what I’d call particularly maternal. It was her first marriage and her child-birthing days were long in the rearview mirror at age 56. Anyhow, her touch on most matters was about as gentle as Ivan Drago’s and it carried over in how she dealt with her grandkids.
We would often be reminded that she wasn’t our real grandmother, just the grandmother we knew.4
Now, since anxiety wasn’t invented until the 1990s, we just kept our collective heads’ down and moved on, even though Josie would poke like she wanted us to ask questions so she could tell the story her way and exert some level of dominance as the One Grandmother to Rule Them All™. In retrospect, had the door been opened for her, no one would have disputed her recollection of the events because a) I think there was still some grief hanging in the air for my father and grandfather and b) Arguing with Josie was like intentionally and repeatedly trying to run on ice.
Josie’s emergence seemingly erased all evidence of my father’s actual mother, Lucy, my aforementioned real grandmother. I’ve seen the photos of her here and there, but the opportunity never presented itself to make that connection because the Josie Factor.
That’s not the case today.
Grieving someone you’ve never met
Haley has gone deep on this topic. She encourages talking about your deceased parent, sibling or other relative to your children. In her experience, having lost her mother while pregnant with her first child, Eleanor has reinforced the place she will always have in her life. It also gives her kids a sense of where they come from.
“People commonly assume that if a child is too young to remember a loved one when they die, they won't grieve that person,” she writes. I see this in my youngest, who will regularly tell my wife that she misses her great-grandmother (her mother’s mother). My wife was close with both of her grandmothers and, before we moved, there were numerous photos of her displayed in our house5.
Our little would regularly take us on “Who’s that?” tours, instantly recognizing us and most of her living relatives, thinking that baby pictures of her sister were really her, and questioning the people in the black and white photos who are long gone.
Haley writes that it’s possible that children might grieve the absence of the relationship, thinking about what they could have had with the relative and even feeling cheated out of something6. It’s also very likely that it will strengthen your bond with your kids and your deceased loved one’s memory, as you become the bridge between the two of them.
So, what should you do?
Talking to your kids about a relative who died before they were born
Taking from my own parental experience, these questions are most likely to come up when a child is younger. Their fearlessness and innocence, fueled by curiosity, will bring these questions to light. The hard work comes in how you respond.
My oldest was a little more mature at five or six than my youngest, so my conversation would absolutely be different. Her questions were more of a fact-finding mission; “who is your mother?” or “when did she die?” There hasn’t been as much of the “what was she like?” or “are you or aunt Marlo more like her?7” But, then again, my oldest is a lot like me; cut to the chase, get in with a question and get out with an answer. She only dwells on things in her head, which I can tell you has its own set of drawbacks8.
My youngest is not there yet. My wife will get repetitive questions like, “Mommy, who is your mommy?” usually followed by “who is her mommy?” This is when we’ll explain that my wife’s grandmother died many years ago, and my six-year-old will start crying (sometimes playfully, sometimes confused) about missing her great-grandmother (that she never met).
One night at dinner, she asked me who my mommy was. I, like Michelle DuBarry’s husband, looked at my wife with the “looks like we’re doing this now?” face (except I had a hamburger jammed in my maw). I explained that Grandma Linda was her grandmother, but not my mother, and that my mother died a long time ago.
I got a confused look, like the hamster running on the wheel that powers her brain had fallen off. After a short pause, she seemed okay with this bit of information and moved on to some other topic.
For those of us in this narrow of space of having to explain the location of a missing piece in our collective lives, I think there are a few key points to remember:
Meet your child where they are. My oldest will ask questions when she wants to know things; again, she’s a lot like me. She doesn’t want to be overwhelmed with information or details. I asked her if she wanted to see pictures and she said yes. She got what she was looking for, and the bonus of seeing my legacy of bad haircuts.
Parents know what their kids can handle and what they are mature enough to internalize. Death is a tough concept at any age, as Michelle DuBarry and Eleanor Haley reveal in their articles linked above. Provide information at the appropriate level of understanding and to where they are mature enough to handle it.
A four-year-old and a seven-year-old will have different questions based on their understanding of the world around them. Serve those basic needs, and offer to show photos or the items you keep as remembrances, but understand there is a delicate balance between introducing their memory to a child and triggering an emotional reaction where the child will begin missing the person or developing anxiety about whether you might die.Let them dictate the pace. If your child wants to know about a dead parent, you need to paint the picture while they tell you how much paint to use. You cannot turn on a firehose of information and detail, or simply try to ignore it. This is parenthood, man; you lost control when the sperm hit the egg. Pace your response based on their questions. Again, my youngest hasn’t gotten to the stage of wanting to know more and I think part of that is because she just lost her Papa. That’s fine because I know she will come back with those questions eventually.
Use props. I showed my oldest kid photos of my mother, which also allowed me to talk about my grandmother and my aunts. Inadvertently, it took us down the road of my sister and my childhoods. She was sort of fascinated with what we looked like when we were her age, how different everyone dressed and how bad everyone’s hair was9.
Very recently, my sister and I were going through some boxes of family photos and both daughters got right in there. It gave us the chance to tell her some of the good stories we could share about our family and try to paint a picture of the generations of people that preceded her.About those stories. Stories are the lifeblood of any society and have been for centuries. The Haudenosaunee had no written language so it was through storytelling that they passed down traditions and history from generation to generation. The Irish would bestow the term seanchai on storytellers who passed down history of their family or town. My point is that stories are the fuel for what keeps families and friendships alive. There’s a reason you and your friends tell the same 10 or 15 stories over and over again. It’s your comfort space.
Sharing that level of comfort with your child is important for them to better understand you and your deceased relative. My wife has been able to relate to both kids that the rocking chair that was in their bedrooms as babies was her grandmother’s and it has provided an on ramp to sharing stories about her. In talking about our family history to my oldest, I’ve explained how the Paventis and Mancinis (mom’s side) came from neighboring towns in Campobasso but did not know one another. One family came through New York City, the other through Providence, and they both landed in Syracuse.
It’s about showing your kid that these people are more than just a face in a photo, and very much a part of who they are.Choose your words. Being honest is important, but substance and style go hand-in-hand here. I’m not going to explain the horrid journey of my mother’s death to either child until I’m convinced they are ready to handle it. Even though the oldest is 13, I don’t want the discussion of pancreatic cancer to be a source of anxiety10 for her. There’s still some shielding to do with her.
Again, being age-appropriate is the name of the game. My oldest knows that my mother had cancer, while my youngest just knows that she died. A more in-depth discussion would be lost on her.Don’t hide it. You shouldn’t go taking photos down of you and your parent from when they were alive just to avoid a conversation. Just as important as providing an age-appropriate response to your kid is your own grief. If a photo of your parent on a nightstand or bookshelf is how you wish to remember them, so be it, but be ready to have the conversation of who those people are in that photo. It’s very likely that you will find catharsis in the conversation. In fact, it’s these photos, pieces of furniture and little trinkets that establish the straight line between your child and your relative.
Everything comes with time, or so I have learned as a parent. They will ask questions. Our job, ultimately, is to provide the right path to the answer.
Share your story
Not all grief is about the death of a person. A Griever’s Digest can be about the loss of a relationship, a job or something meaningful but inanimate. Consider sharing your grief with a bunch of strangers. Email me at jaredpaventi@substack.com.
Final thoughts on finality…
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
— Mary Oliver
Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.
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Stannard, D. E. (1973). Death and Dying in Puritan New England. The American Historical Review, 78(5), 1305–1330. https://doi.org/10.2307/1854094
Starship Troopers is a fun watch, if only because of the violence. It falls into that segment of good bad movies along with Road House and Deep Impact. Conversely, The Departed is a bad good movie.
That was in January 1976. I was born in August 1977. Everything happened much faster in the 70s.
Boys and girls, this isn’t even the worst of the shit she pulled. Wait until the upcoming issue on dealing with the death of a relative you don’t like.
We’ve been in our new place since June 2022 and I can tell you that more than 75 percent of what we had displayed at our old house is still in boxes.
We’ve talked about my aunt Marietta before. My oldest had a lovely relationship with her. A former kindergarten teacher, she loved having her over to watch Disney movies and would run educational program for her while she was there; they would work on tricky words and decoding, counting and sorting, and other age-appropriate things. My aunt took her turn and moved into senior living just after our youngest was born, denying her a similar experience.
I’m not even sure how I’d answer that. I think my sister and I both inherited some good and some bad personality traits of both parents.
I’ll drink to that. In fact, I have drank to that.
Lots of perms. The 80s, man. Oof.
She’s 13, so emotions are sort of unpredictable both in time, trigger, type and magnitude.