When There Are No Words

Micheal, the husband of my friend Susan who recently passed, writes that their four year old grandson Ian asked if MaMa was dead. Yes, Micheal told him, and the boy went off to play. But now, a couple of weeks later, Ian wants to know when MaMa is going to come back alive again.

When is Susan going to come back alive? I know how Ian feels. I was thinking the other night, okay, joke’s over, let’s go back to the way it was.

Micheal said he tried to explain it to Ian but could tell the kid wasn’t buying what he was saying. I don’t know how to explain death to a child, either.

I’m a Christian and I’m supposed to believe we go to heaven, and I believe that if there is a heaven, Susan is there, but I also think that we just don’t know what happens when we die. I think there is a truth and that we don’t know what it is. If it is heaven, cool.

The Christian heaven is the way Christians talk about the afterlife - but again, I think a lot of theology uses puny little words to talk about things that are too huge to be contained by all the words we’ve got. The word "God" is a pretty small box and couldn’t possibly contain whatever "God" is - the word is a symbol, a placeholder, for what we don’t know how to say or grasp.

If you say things like, "God took her" or "she’s in a better place" a kid is bound to wonder what kind of a jerk God is for taking people he or she loves, and besides, what better place could there be than right here with me? Children will trip you up on points like that.

Then there are visitations.

I heard a "grief expert" saying the other day that people who have recently lost a loved one normally hallucinate things like the sound of the door opening at the time that person came home from work every day, for example. I’ve also heard from therapists that it is quite common to wake up and find the shade of a beloved dead person standing by your bed, watching over you as you sleep. So if someone you love has passed recently, just in case you’re afraid you’re hearing or seeing things, don’t freak out. Turns out that’s normal.

When talking to a child about death, keeping it simple and brief would probably be good. I know that’s a good idea in general when talking with children.

I think you’d need to tell a child that bodies die, but spirits don’t, and love doesn’t. You could say that the person who died is not coming back the way we knew her, and we’re very sad, and we love her and miss her so much, but she’s not sick anymore, not hurting. We know that she wants us to go on living, remembering her and telling stories about her and being glad we got to love her and be loved by her because she was such a great MaMa, such a great Susan, the best there ever was, really, one in seven billion.

I’d think that if it’s appropriate you could hold that child and try to be as comforting as possible in the face of our unfortunate and unavoidable mortality. If it was me, I know I’d be faking it, because ultimately, there are no words that adequately explain the death of his beloved grandmother to a little boy.

As you become older and more of the people you know pass on before you, you become a little more inured to death, but when someone close to you dies, it is quite literally stunning. All you can do is grieve, and go on, and wait for the solace that can come with tincture of time.

What shall we do today? Let’s get up and live and thank God.