19/02/2023
I was sitting outside in the foyer of a church while a funeral service was taking place in the sanctuary. It was early in my career and my face wasn’t old enough to be taken too seriously by adults.
In the middle of the service, the 10 year old granddaughter of the deceased got up from her pew and started walking towards the back of the church with her eyes fixed on me. I straightened up, and smiled, letting her know I could help if she needed something.
She walked right up beside me, cupped her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “How do I know my Pop-pop isn’t just sleeping?”, her 10 year old eyes expressing deep concern.
“How do I know he won’t wake up once he’s in the ground?”
Her grandfather was embalmed and I assured her — without explaining just what embalming does — that she didn’t have to fear he’d wake up.
“But they told me he was sleeping,” she replied with a voice loud enough that it turned heads.
Death is hard for adults to understand. Even if we approach it from a purely biological and reductionist perspective, the answers still fall short of the human part of it that’s clouded in pain and mystery.
It’s tempting to project our own insecurities, fears and trite answers onto children, to justify dishonesty for the sake of “protection.” To disenfranchise their questions because “they can’t understand.” It’s tempting because that’s how many of us have been taught.
Talking to children about death is hard.
Because most of us haven’t been modeled by adults how to talk to ourselves about death. We don’t know how to hold space for our insecurities and fear, how to step into our questions and to allow ourselves to feel pain and grief.
So be gentle to yourself, my friend. We are all children in death. Each and every one.
And when you grieve and when you doubt, imagine how you’d talk to yourself if you were a child.
Gentle, but real.
Kind, but truthful.
Holding space for all fears and insecurities and grief. And realizing you’re not a failure if you don’t have the answers.
When you’re grieving, care for yourself like you’d care for a child. Hold space for all those feelings. No one is an adult around death.
