Children and Grieving

Between Braddock, Skip's mom, and my grandmother, our family has had to deal with a lot of death in the past year and a half.  And as devastatingly hard as it has all been for Skip and I, it has been even harder for our Emmy.  She is still very young, but sadly not young enough to be shielded from all of this.  I have talked about her experiences with some of this grief here before.

When adults grieve, we typically start grieving immediately, and then it lessens a bit over time.  Obviously there will still be moments, days, that rock us with grief, even decades later after the person is gone.  But most of the grieving process begins right when the person dies.

I have learned through Emmy, that children grieve very different.  Braddock's death made her very sad in the beginning, as did the death of Skip's mom and my grandma, but as to even understand the concept of death, her grief was not fully realized.  Instead, her grief comes in waves, and has since July 2012.  She will have days or weeks of crying every day over what we've lost.

She is in the middle of one of these waves, and I'm truly at a loss at how to help her.  She does now understand the concept of death.  She understands that sometimes people get older, or can get a disease called cancer, or eat a pacifier like her dog, and can die.  She knows that when someone dies they are no longer alive, and they go to heaven to be with God.  We've told her that heaven is a wonderful place where they are no longer sick or in pain.  We tell her that people in heaven can see us, but that we can't see them.  She knows that once someone goes to heaven, they are there forever...though she is still struggling with that concept of forever as time passes.

The past month or so has been hard on Emmy in terms of her dealing with death, mainly about Braddock.  He lived in our house and she saw him every day.  In her mind, he was an equal part of our immediately family.  She misses him.  She cries to me saying how much she wants him back.  I have placed pictures of him {along with Skip's mom and my grandma} around her room.  She sleeps with several "Braddock" toys {bulldog stuffed toys we've collected over the years} and she makes sure I sleep with my own Braddock toy since she knows how much I miss him as well. 

Recently she has really been struggling with the concept of forever.  She knows that when people go to heaven, it's forever.  She just doesn't quite fully understand what forever means.  Sometimes she thinks that if they spend enough time in heaven, then they will be healed and come back to be with us.

Emmy has also started "playing death" with her toys.  She'll have one of her little toys talking to another about how someone in their family got old and died.  She accidentally cut the arms of one of her paper dolls recently and after laying the doll down, told me it died since it got hurt.  It's strange to me, and heartbreaking, to see her playing this way, but kids this age play about their reality...and sadly this has been hers. 

I have several books about death, and a few more about pet death that we've read together.  Most of the time she really understands what happened.  But sometimes she questions what death is, how long it lasts, and has it really happened {in the same way we as adults do as well}.  I hate that this is her life.  I hate that she worries about us getting older, and closer to death she says, on our birthdays.  I hate that she worries anytime one of us has a cold or virus. 

I don't want you to think that Emmy is just focused on death all the time.  99% of the day it's not even a thought.  But when she does question it, and hurt from it, it just cuts me down to my core.  I guess this is just her way of processing things and it will just lessen with time.  I just hate that she's really upset about something, and other than comforting her, there is nothing I can do to make it better.  Because if there was a way to bring back those we've lost this year, I would have already.  I want nothing more than to make Emmy happy and keep her total innocence in tact.

How have you dealt with death with your children?  Any other ideas you have that could help her?