On Kids and Death.
How does one create a sense of safety after a parent dies?
Controlling the therapy narrative. That was my catchy little phrase for filtering out the negative, confusing, or too-mature experiences for my children. We could not control everything, so we would explain, teach, and provide guidance. For example, COVID-19 was beyond our control. But we could explain it. It was also an admission that our wiring was not great, and likely our children stood to inherit some pretty interesting nervous systems.
It was a funny phrase; we'd speak to each other like a secret code or a safe word.
"Therapy narrative!"
Then we'd look knowingly at each other and redirect, change course, or sometimes just laugh at the absurdity of preparing ourselves for the children to be grown adults with therapists.
When Gabe died, I lost control of the therapy narrative.
In my previous essays, I have written about the death of my children's father, the mental illness that was present in our home, and childhood trauma. I wonder how many checkboxes my children tick on their own trauma scorecards? The death of a parent? Living with someone with a mental illness? The antidote to these traumas, it seems, is meaningful, secure, and safe attachment relationships.
How do you cultivate safety when your children learn that a parent can be alive one evening and gone forever the next day? How do you maintain your status as a reliable attachment figure for children who worry that you will vanish, become mist, and cease to exist in their lives? And how do you convince them that nothing will happen to you when you know it can?
The world feels unpredictable and cruel to me as an adult. I worry often about losing another person. I worry when I open a door that the person inside will be lying dead. If I can't find someone on our farm, I panic that they are gone forever. If I don't hear from my mother, whose house is 100 feet from my own, I think she has passed. It's my knee-jerk reaction, my PTSD flashback, my worst nightmare. And, as it were, it did happen again. My father died on November 25th, suddenly and under the cover of night. We had dinner together that evening, and sometime around 11:30, his heart stopped beating. No amount of worrying had fended off the inevitable eventuality that we would experience death.
However, I found myself in familiar territory. I knew how to tell children their grandpa had passed because a few years earlier, I was on the phone with a crisis line, speaking to a clinician about the best ways to talk to kids about death. I had a pretty good understanding of how to support my mom. I knew how empty it would feel without him and how we would inadvertently forget he was gone in the early weeks. I had also joined a club with my children; we had all lost our dads. Under wildly different circumstances, of course.
The therapy narrative goes out the window when you're struggling to maintain order, safety, routine, all of the things that children thrive on - but people keep suddenly passing away. Our beloved dog, Reggie, passed away a few months after Gabe. It seemed like death had found a comfortable place in our lives and wasn't ready to leave.
I made a bold attempt to hit this thing head-on with the kids. Amongst the pamphlets, folders, and paperwork I received from the funeral home was the contact information for The Elizabeth Hospice. They had a children's bereavement program and individual counseling. A rare and one-of-a-kind program not available in most cities. I called them immediately, and we were put on a waiting list; it would be September before they would be able to join the peer-based grief group. We attended an orientation. The facility was incredible, with an entire floor dedicated to helping children process their loss. There was a meeting room, a hospital room, a music room, an arts and crafts room, a game space, and my son's favorite, the volcano room. That room was padded, top to bottom, with thick, indestructible material. Inside was a person, an effigy made from that same material, as well as foam blocks and cubes. It was a padded room redefined and rebranded. The volcano room was welcoming and colorful, and it was designed to channel a child's rage. The only boundary was the timer that hung on the door. Kids were welcome and free from judgment, but the room was so popular that the facilitators only allowed you to beat the shit out of it for 5-10 minutes at a time.
In the interim, from May to September, the hospice loaded me up on resources, and we met our individual grief counselors. One of the items they emailed over was a document about how children grieve differently than adults. It is often not expressed through tears but rather through developmental delays and behavioral challenges that arise. There was a list for my son's age group and my daughter's age group. I used it as a measuring stick. Yes, we had a rise in separation anxiety, sleep problems, and a few developmental setbacks. However, no one was hitting each other or setting anything on fire, which seemed like a positive development.
The hospice had a variety of suggested activities for kids. Have them participate in activities that help them feel connected to their dad. Talk about him often, create a memory box, read "The Invisible String," and give them ways to express themselves through art or play. Display a picture of their person on the dinner table on special occasions. Make teddy bears from their clothing. We did a lot of those things. I am very good at following directions and am a star therapy patient.
I also became obsessed with the idea that we had to create happy childhood memories to offset this horrible one. I had read that to perceive you've had a good life, you need to maintain a ratio of 1:5, meaning five positive experiences for every one negative. I felt like we were racing against the clock. We went to Disneyland and Universal Studios. I bought a little travel trailer, and we went camping in the Grand Canyon. We had playdates and sleepovers. We planted a grief garden, which no one was really interested in but me. I enlisted a crew of indie rockers, family, and dear friends to help us finish our above-ground swimming pool. That, above all else, was the source of more laughter and joy than 10 trips to Disneyland.
I learned in those early days that you can't force it. Fun trips were eclipsed by anxiety and wishes for Dad. There isn't an emergency exit through which to escape. Children, however resilient, must also process their loss on their own timelines. If they are very young, they may need to reprocess it several times as they reach different developmental milestones and gain a deeper understanding of the world around them. As they attend school or activities, they will hear over and over the words "Mom and Dad." There is no rest for the parents left behind to shepherd their children through such a loss.
Well-meaning people often ask me how the kids are doing. The question is benign but baited, in the hope that I will swallow the shiny lure and finally admit that my children are shells of their former selves, in complete agony. The kids are good, thriving, even. They are better than satisfactory most of the time, but on average, they're fine. They laugh, cry, and resist cleaning their rooms at an appropriate level. Do they miss their dad? Yeah, they do. Do they worry more about losing me? Sometimes. When I came home from the hospital after spinal fusion, my son was suddenly a wreck. I was using a walker. He was sure I was dying. He wanted to be next to me, but he was inconsolable. He was angry with me, scared, and uncharacteristically rough. Later, I realized that the grief groups he attended had that hospital room. So many of the kids in these groups had lost a parent to a prolonged illness that the room was a familiar space. In that room was a walker. My son, just four years old, viewed the walker as an omen that my death was imminent.
In my limited and experiential wisdom, kids' grief often seeks out the cracks. It will press its hands up against the perimeters to find the weakness, then escape into the unknown in a quick rush of emotions. Rarely does it say plainly to you, "I miss my Dad," but instead screams in an unfamiliar tongue. We, the ones left behind, are the ones who translate. And we are the most skilled, the most suited for this work, because the frequency of their pain matches our own. We can hear it resonating in the tears. And we can tend to it. In this tending, this care, this attention is the growing bud of a different kind of safety.
Carl Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” We, the three of us, have lived together through a shadow, a storm, a thick fog. The safety I now offer my children is that I will hold the darkness with them, I will not look away, and I will love them through it. I will meet them there, when it arises, and hold them as it makes its circuitous path to consciousness.