Tuesday, June 1, 2010

On Death

In the past 6 weeks we have had 3 people die who were close to us. It is such a hard thing to try and explain to your 4 year old. And something about dealing with it 3 times recently makes it all the more real. We can't forget about it and move on.
Tim stopped a little short one day with the car, "Are we going to die, Mom?"

Stuff like that breaks my heart, how do you explain it and make sure she is getting it. She brings it up often. "Mommy, even though grandpa's dead, he's still my grandpa."

The first was a classmate of Samantha's. Words can not explain how hard this was. A week or so later randomly in the car she said, "he wanted to be a fireman when he grew up, but now he's not going to grow up".

Then it was my husbands grandfather. He was sick in the hospital and we visited him and of course we thought he would get better, so that's what we told her, until he didn't.

Death is brought up a lot lately here at our house. I can't help but thinking, will she remember this? She's 4 1/2. Will she remember that one of her friends died from her preschool class? And when she is old enough to process it and contemplate it, what will she say? What do these experiences mean to her?

No matter how she seems to process this, I'm just glad that I was open and honest about the whole thing with her. Even if death is hard to deal with a young age, it's better to be honest and factual and talk about our feelings then to pretend none of this has happenned.

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