"Mommy's Crying Again": Grieving With Young Children

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My five year old son walked in on me doing the ugly cry. That's the heaving snot-fest, if you've been blessed to never experience it, or just didn't recognize the description.

"Why are you sad?"

"Because my mommy died, and I really miss my mommy."

"You really miss your mommy?"

"Yes."

"That is sad."

He left the room, and I heard him tell my husband, "Mommy's crying again." For a second, I smiled, because he knew his dad had this; in his little mind, dad would make it better.




I have never hid grief from my children because I refuse to release into this world yet more people who are afraid of grief. Grief is sad, and it hurts, and it is hard, and that is okay. I want them to know it. I want them to be comfortable with it. I don't want them to run for the hills when friends of theirs need them, and I don't want them to believe they cannot handle it, or that it is something to hide, to be ashamed of, to feel weakened by in a way that makes them feel less than capable or that they should be handling it "better" or in whatever way some well-meaning but terribly wrong soul tells them. In other words, I want them to understand grief and to know that grief and all that comes with it is okay.

I give them age-appropriate honesty. When one well meaning person told my son his great-grandfather was "sleeping" in his casket, my young son said, loudly, "He's not sleeping. He died."

I quickly whisked him away and reinforced what I had already prepared him for -- great-grandpa was not sleeping. His body didn't work anymore, and he died. I knew some well-meaning but seriously misinformed person would offer him misguided comfort, and so he and I had several talks before the funeral. I answered all his questions and told him several times that if he had any more questions at the funeral, then he should ask me in a quiet voice. Because really -- for fuck's sake, when I put my kid to bed that night to sleep, I didn't want him worried we would put him in a box and lower him into the ground. Age-appropriateness, straight-forward honesty is the only way I know not to totally screw up his little mind.

My mom didn't want a service, didn't want us to see her that way. "I want you to remember me alive."

That was all good and great in theory, I suppose, but you know what? Her death is not quite real to my son. He understood his great-grandfather was gone. He talked about it for a long time afterward, and good gawd, to EVERYBODY! Now, to him, I can tell it still feels to him like Grandma is at home, far away, so we don't see her everyday. That she is gone is not something he has seen for himself, so I can tell, it hasn't really registered. And that's okay, too.