Where’s granny gone?

Parents tend to avoid talking about death with their children, fearing it might upset or worry them. Experts advise parents to take the chance to talk to their children about death and the circle of life.

As my aunt’s coffin was slowly lowered into its final resting-place in a small country-town cemetery on the Gold Coast, a small audience of five children watched fascinated. When mourners were invited to throw a long-stemmed rose onto the coffin, the children stood longer than was polite looking into the grave, roses hovering, to get a good last look at the coffin.

The questions had begun on the way to the church; why did they put people in coffins, did the body melt or rot, how long did it take for the body to become a pile of bones, was aunty wearing clothes, and if so, what? What about her watch and rings, had they been removed, by whom, and who had them now?

Such seemingly morbid questions from children are normal, says psychologist and Centre for Grief Education director, Chris Hall. Children ask lots of questions because they need reliable information to make sense of death. They are fascinated with the ‘mechanics’ surrounding death in order to construct meaning around it.

And children need honest answers. Euphemisms such as: ‘Grandma went to sleep’ or ‘Grandma passed away’ only serve to confuse or worry children and raise more questions. Le Pine Funeral Services, in Camberwell, manager Tim Goessling suggests a simple:  ‘Grandma has died’ as the best approach.

Children prefer the truth, he says. If they don’t receive honest and simple answers from adults, they tend to replace reality with worse and more unsettling scenarios. And although there is nothing more certain in life than death and taxes, we live in a death denying society.

‘Children have been disenfranchised from grieving,’ says Mr Hall. To make sense of death children need to be included in mourning rituals and have their questions answered.  Mr Hall advises children be actively encouraged to not only attend the funeral of a loved-one, but also to view the body. But they should not go it alone – children need to be well prepared by supportive adults. And surprisingly, children tend to cope better than adults with the rituals that surround death.

Instead of leading our lives as though we are immortal, we need to talk to children about the circle of life whenever a good opportunity arises. It isn’t wise to wait until someone close to a child had died before talking about death with them. Movies such as The Lion King give parents wonderful opportunities to talk about life and death. The death of a family pet is another opportunity.

Mr Hall said a ‘conspiracy of silence’ around death does not help children. ‘Children are not exposed to death, and so death is not only foreign to adults, it is even more foreign to children,’ he said.

Death wasn’t as removed for children in western societies 100 years ago. Back then more than 80 per cent of people died at home. Today, 80 per cent of people die in hospitals, hospices or nursing homes. And high infant mortality rates before and into the early 1900s meant many children experienced the death of a brother or sister, neighbour or relative.

Today, adult anxiety, rather than children’s, was commonly a big player in disconnecting children from grief by excluding them from the very rituals designed to help people deal with it. ‘I support the maxim: ‘If you’re old enough to love; you’re old enough to grieve’,’ Mr Hall said.

‘Children don’t have role models about death,’ Mr Hall said. ‘Children look to adults around them on how to behave and it’s important that adults resist the desire to protect children too much. Grief is not a disease, it’s the price we pay for love.’

Tim Goessling agrees children should be involved in mourning rituals like funerals, although he says children are often their own best judges of the extent of their involvement. ‘I think adults should be guided by cues from the children themselves,’ he says. Some show interest in what’s happening and others don’t, it depends on the relationship they had with the person who died.’

‘If they saw Grandma once or twice in a nursing home and the connection was not a very strong one, then children might not be as interested. But my own parents are very close to my four children and so when my parents die, as one day they will, my children’s reaction to their loss will be different because they had a strong relationship,’ he said.

But children should not be ‘protected’ from death by fobbing off questions, not answering questions honestly and openly or being forbidden to attend a funeral.

Children also need to be shown that death is not the end of a relationship, but a re-arrangement of the attachment to the person who has died. ‘Children need to be shown that grieving is not about saying good-bye,’ Mr Hall says. ‘We don’t end the relationship when someone physically dies, we preserve it and continue the relationship with the person who is not physically present.’

Children could be encouraged to keep their memories and their relationship with the person, alive by making memory boxes, visiting the grave and talking to the person. Acting out memories through games, talking to friends or to people who knew the person who had died are other ways to keep memories alive.

As her pet rabbit’s heart took its last beats in life, Meredith Hall felt her own heart ‘beating fast and cracking in half’. It was the four-year-old’s first experience of death and she cried for ‘almost three days’. A year later, Meredith still reads her eight-chapter book, titled ‘My Rabbit’.  Her father Chris helped her to write the book as a way of working through her loss and grief.

As director of Australia’s largest provider of grief and bereavement education, the Grief Education Centre in Victoria, Mr Hall said often adults urged children to deny their grief because adults were uncomfortable seeing those feelings in children.

We all grieved differently, so it was important to find a child’s ‘natural language’ for the grieving process.
After the Ash Wednesday bushfires, for example, children near affected areas had found their ‘natural language’ through play and many children were seen playing games featuring firefighters.

And after the death of his father, one young child re-created the funeral using matchbox toys, while a 14-year-old boy, after his brother’s death, worked through his grief by making his brother a wooden cross. Meredith’s natural language was to write.

The death of his daughter’s rabbit also provided Mr Hall with a chance to talk about death and grief. ‘We talked about her feelings and from there we talked about deaths of family members,’ he said. ‘The rabbit’s death provided a bridge to other deaths as well.’ And so Meredith’s rabbit, Rar, lies buried in the garden under a rose and the small girl is left with her memories both happy and sad.

By Anna Malbon

Useful books and websites

The Australian Centre for Grief Education runs a bereavement counselling service as well as bereavement education and training for health professionals, teachers, students, volunteers, agencies and other professional and community groups. 

Seasons For Growth Peer Support Program, where companions are trained to run a 10-week peer support program for children aged 5 to 18 who have experienced loss and grief through death, divorce or separation. Companions can be from community groups, churches and schools.
 

National Association for Loss and Grief (NALAG)

Margaret Wild is an acclaimed children’s author not afraid of tackling the issues of death and grief in a gentle and accessible way:

Old Pig by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks

Old Pig and Granddaughter have lived together for a long, long time. They share everything, including the chores, until the day when Old Pig does not get up as usual for breakfast. Calmly she puts her affairs in order, then she takes Granddaughter on a last long walk - looking and listening, smelling and tasting.

Jenny Angel by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas

Jenny's little brother Davy is very ill and her mother says that no one will be able to keep him alive. But Jenny thinks that as long as she watches over Davy, nothing can happen. A story about a young girl's courage and the uncertainty and beauty of life.

Harry and Hopper by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood

Harry and his dog Hopper have done everything together since Hopper was a puppy; one day harry comes home from school to the terrible news that Hopper will never be there again. Harry is not ready to let him go – a story about the shcok of grief and the power of love.

After Charlotte’s Mom Died by Cornelia Maude Spelman

Not only does Charlotte have to deal with feeling sad when her mother dies, she is also being teased at school because she doesn't have a mum. Because six-year-old Charlotte feels sad, mad, and scared, she and her dad visit a therapist who helps them acknowledge and express their feelings.

Grief In Children - A Handbook for adults by Atle Dyregrov

This fully updated second edition of Grief in Children explains children's understanding of death at different ages and gives a detailed outline of exactly how the adults around them can best help them cope. Whether a child experiences the death of a parent, sibling, other relation or friend, or of a classmate or teacher, it is important for those caring for bereaved children to know how to respond.

Available from the People Making Bookstore.

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, October 2000. Updated July 2009.