Back in the fall an acquaintance lost his family dog. The man has two sons who are 11 and 7 years old. He didn't know when he was telling me the story that I was four months removed from burying my father, so he wasn't being insensitive when he consoled himself by saying that at least the dog provided his boys an experience with a "starter death". I took no offense, but I did think about how my kids had no choice but to dive right in on their first meeting with death. They weren't afforded training wheels.
Thankfully my wife is an excellent mother, and she did a lot of work in advance to make sure that when the time came to break this terrible news to the kids, it was done with compassion and grace. She once said to me that this would be our chance to influence how they felt about death throughout their lives, so we had to get it right. She brought home books, and talked with people who had had to share this kind of news with their own young children, as well as educators, rabbis, and psychologists. We are fortunate to have so many great friends. I am fortunate to have married this lady. I'm not saying that you can remove the scary or upsetting parts of losing a grandparent, but she managed a tough parenting challenge masterfully.
These days Papa is as much a fact of life in my house as anything else. We can mention him without any of us falling to pieces. This is good, because it is very important to me that my kids associate good memories with him and don't fixate only on losing him so soon into their lives. My middle guy, who is four now, but was three when we lost my dad, believes Papa is in our hearts. But he seems to think that a mini version of a living person is literally in his heart. So much so that he once told my mother not to pat his chest, because she was shaking Papa.
The oldest is processing it differently. Once in a while he brings it up, and he wants to know every single minute detail about what happened. How did the nurses know he died? Who did they call? What did you do next? When did the rabbi get there? What did you do in the room right after he died? What was he wearing at his funeral? Who dressed him? Where was he after he died, but before he was buried? How did he get cancer? Why couldn't his doctor just take the cancer out of his body?
Losing a grandparent also has forced him to think about life's big questions well before he should have had to. And as a parent, it has forced me to try to craft comforting answers before I felt wise enough to. I expect any day that he will ask the two big questions: How did we get here, and what happens when we die? He is most interested in the latter question. Of course, the most honest answer to either one is, "Who the hell knows?" But that isn't useful when you are trying to help a first-grader make sense of the universe. I want to set him at ease, but I don't want to weave myths that will invariably come undone, and I want to try to be honest, too. My boy is intelligent and perceptive, but have you ever tried explaining what a soul is to someone who only recently learned how to read?
For now he seems satisfied by the stock answer about souls "going to be with God." But if and when that answer no longer holds I've decided to share with him a version of my own feelings about what happens when we die: the best we can do is be kind to others while we're here without expecting some eternal reward. This sentiment was expressed more elegantly by Dr. Mark Vonnegut, the son of my favorite writer, Kurt Vonnegut. He said, "We are here to help each other through this thing. Whatever it is."
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