Words matter. An old newspaper editor taught me that. Well, probably my Mom taught me that. But the editor hammered it home one night when I wrote that a firefighter aroused someone in their burning home rather than writing they were roused.
Words matter even more when talking to kids, as my wife and I have learned a lot lately since we’ve been talking a lot about death.
Some kids, not mine, on Memorial Day thing at a cemetery
A few months ago, we lost our second pet in about six months – both to old age and its various calamities. Then, a few weeks ago, a dear friend of my wife’s died after an extended illness. These things aren’t easy on adults but they sure confuse the heck out of kids.
Heidi and I decided to take a direct approach with our boys, telling them straight up at each passing that they person/cat died only after becoming very ill. The kids seemed to understand and we all sort of moved on.
Owen, who is 6 and tends to focus on certain things from time to time, has decided to focus on death – in a big hurry. It’s great because he’s talking about it, not internalizing it or just stewing about it and this is about the time kids start to focus on death anyway. But boy is he talking about it. He asks my Mother and Father about how their parents died when they call. He asks us about how we felt when our grandparents died at odd times in random conversations. He asks if Mom and Dad are going to die (that’s a heart-breaker, let me tell you). He even brought it up with a woman he’d just met the other day in the park.
The amazing thing is just how careful we have to be, even in being direct – even more so because we are being direct with him.
When we opt to tell him that my grandmother died because she got old and sick and, when he asks where she died and I say at the hospital, that leaves an impression. And so when, as has happened this week, Heidi or I get sick and have to go to the doctor, that gives Owen a serious case of the jitters – for good reason.
When in doubt, take the Mufasa approach from “The Lion King,” reassure them that all these things are natural, that people are born, they live and they die – and hope he doesn’t think to remind you Mufasi died early.
The bottom line, and I credit my wife for getting this far sooner than I did, is that words matter. When we say that people get sick and die, they have to get really, really sick, their bodies stopped working and the doctors couldn’t fix them. When we say they died at the hospital, they had to have been really sick before they went to the hospital. A 6-year-old can’t be expected to know the difference between Daddy’s head cold and the mid-60s cancer victim. Oh, and no one was “lost” and neither of the cats got put to “sleep.”
So it’s up to Mom and Dad to step up, to use the right words, to talk it out, painful, difficult and awkward as that is from time to time. And it’s up to us to talk it out carefully because, as the roused fire victim taught me, words matter.
Nice post. My father, who is 82, was sitting with his 6 year-old grandson recently (my nephew). The boy turned to him and said, quite matter-of-factly, “Grumps (that’s what the kids call him), when my daddy is old like you, you’ll be dead.” My dad thanked him for the reminder.