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Helping Children: Explaining Cremation

by Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti 

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

Explaining cremation can be a challenge.  The first step is to make sure that the child you’re explaining it to understands that death is the end of all life in the body – that the person’s body does not think or feel or breathe, that the person’s life in the body has ended and that the body left behind when someone dies is like a fallen leaf or a broken twig.  (Be sure that each of your children understand this essential concept.  Sometimes one child “gets it” before another, even if they are close in age.) 

The next thing is to explain that the body of the loved one (not the loved one) will be cremated, using the words “Uncle John’s body”, not “Uncle John”.  Explain that the remains of the body will be returned in a container called an urn and that the urn is not very big. From this point, provide information based on the questions the child will ask.  Ask each child if he or she has any questions.  If the child asks how the body gets smaller or what it’s like, say, “Cremation is a process that makes the body kind of like sand.”  If the child asks how, say, “The process uses heat.”  If the child asks, “Is it fire?”, answer by telling them again that the body is no longer alive and that it is just left behind, like a fallen leaf.  When you are sure the child understands, you can say, “Yes, the way that cremation happens is with heat or fire.”  

The key to explaining cremation is to be lead by the child to reveal the level of detail he or she needs to understand.  Using non-dramatic words to describe the process is also important.  If the child seems shocked, explain that bodies are cremated every day – that we believe it is an honorable way to take care of the body after someone has died.  Most kids accept the idea fairly easily when they get a careful explanation. 

Anne Hatcher Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti co-authored the book 10 Steps for Parenting Your Grieving Children. Anne is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in work with children, adolescents, and their parents in Northfield, IL. Vicki is Manager of Children's Bereavement Services at Rainbow Hospice in Mt. Prospect, IL. Please stop by and visittheir website. 

Helping Children: Explaining Death by Suicide Years after it Happened

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

by Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti

Q.  When my husband died a few years ago, I felt my kids were too little to understand a complicated death by suicide.  Now that they’re older, it seems they have a right to the actual story.  I’m concerned that they’ll hear about the events from someone else in the family or our neighborhood.  I can’t figure out how to begin the conversation or what to tell them.

A.  Explaining suicide to children, of any age, isn’t easy.  When years have elapsed since the death it can seem especially daunting.  I don’t know how old your children are now, but your decision to share the more complete truth about their father’s death with them seems like a good one.

How to begin depends on what the children believe about what happened to their dad.  If you begin by asking them if they have any questions, you may be surprised to find out that they have been wondering exactly what happened for some time.  They might have overhead something and not felt comfortable asking about it.

If your children really seem to have no idea that the story they’ve had was a little vague or incomplete, you can explain that it’s an appropriate time for them to have more information.   Starting by saying, “You really are growing up and I appreciate how sensible and responsible you’re becoming day by day.  I wanted to talk with you about Dad and about how he died.  There were some things that I didn’t feel you would understand when you were younger, but I want you to know about now.” 

The basic facts that you want to share with them are:

• Dad was ill.  He had an illness (bi-polar disease, depression, anxiety, etc.) that affected his brain.
• When a person’s brain gets sick in this way, it is called ________ or mental illness.
• A brain that is sick creates a lot of thoughts and feelings that are painful and frightening to the person.  The person finds it very hard to deal with the difficult and confused feelings.  He may believe that he will feel this way forever and there is no way to get help.  That isn’t true, but that’s the message that the sick brain keeps sending.
• Sometimes, when a person has been feeling this badly, he decides to make his body stop working and end his life.  That is called suicide.
• That is what happened to Dad. 
•  It was a terribly sad mistake and we grown-ups (me, Dad’s mother, his brother, best friend, etc.) “would have tried” or “were trying” very hard to get Dad help from doctors, with treatment, and with medication – but he ended his life before we could get him any relief or help him feel better.

Helping Children: Reunion Fantasies

By Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

My 7 year old says she wants to die so she can be with her father who died from suicide.  What should I say and do? 

 Some children have fantasies about joining their loved one in heaven by dying themselves.  This is understandable.  First, it takes a long time for children to grasp the concept that death is irreversible.  Children of your daughter’s age (and even older) still waver in their understanding that death is forever.  So you daughter’s fantasies of reunion with her dad may not include the realization that she herself would never be alive again once she died.  (Cartoons and video games where characters regularly come back to life seem to give evidence supporting children’s ideas of death as less than final.)  

Second, yearning for the loved one who died is a grief response shared by many children and adults.  You can empathize with your child’s longing for the missing person, letting her know that she’s not alone in that feeling.  And at the same time, you can let her know that she can keep her Daddy in her heart while living life on earth.  Be clear that this is what Daddy would want her to do.  Lovingly think together about your daughter’s future on this earth.  Reinforce this by showing that you notice and appreciate the positive things she does, whether it is patting the dog, setting the table, learning in school, getting up after falling down, or being kind to someone else.

If belief in God and heaven is a part of your faith, you can emphasize that heaven is eternal and comes at the end of our God-given lives here; her father will be there forever and he will wait until she has had a full life.  When there is a lot of emphasis on what a wonderful place heaven is, children can get the ideas that death is a desirable thing because they’ll be surrounded by love, no one will ever be upset with them again, and they won’t feel any more sadness, pain, fear or anger.  It’s more helpful to emphasize that God’s love is always with her, even while she’s on this earth, giving her strength and courage. 

Helping Children: Telling Preschool Chidren

By Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

Q.  "How soon do I tell my preschool children about their father’s death from suicide?"

 The short answer is that now is the right time to tell them—don’t put it off until they are older.  “But they don’t have the concepts to understand,” you may say.  And you would be right; they don’t have the concepts.  That’s part of the reason you start now to construct the foundation of words and ideas that they can build on as they grow.  You are thinking long range.  You are helping your children form the concepts they need and can use now—and in the future.  That’s also part of the reason you tailor your explanations to their developmental level so that you’re telling them the truth, but it’s the truth that they can make use of now. 

There is never a “right moment” when a child is going to understand suicide.  Understanding is a process, not an “aha” moment.  And it’s a long, slow process even for adults.  Waiting for some hoped-for sign that this is the time to tell also increases the risk that the child will feel shocked and betrayed when you do tell her.  Or that she’ll overhear a remark made by someone and then build up a load of misconceptions, fantasies, and/or worries based on information that you have no control over.

It works better for little children to have a simple story about the death that can be adapted as they grow older and are able to understand more.   If the words are familiar, they lose their power to shock and scare.  Think of the way adopted children are now told that they were adopted, well before they can grasp the full meaning of the word “adoption.”  Even though a child’s entrance into a loving family is a happy event and the loss of a loved one to suicide is an extremely sad event, the model of this piece of information being something the child has always known is a helpful one.  Treating this information as one aspect of the family’s life leads most easily to the children integrating that fact into their life stories.  As they grow older, they can rework the story as they need to at each developmental stage.

Helping Children: Keeping Tabs on Teens

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg PhD

By Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti 

My teenage son lost his older brother to suicide earlier this year.  He’s in school activities, has nice friends and a nice girlfriend—all wonderful things—but I’m so afraid something terrible will happen to him, too.  I worry all the time, especially when he stays overnight at a friend’s house, and I need him to call me.  How do I find the balance between overprotecting him and just letting him be a high school kid?

It is to be expected that parents feel vulnerable themselves and feel that their children are vulnerable after a death in the family, especially a death from suicide.  And the teen years, when children are widening their orbit beyond the home, are challenging for most parents.  So it’s very understandable that you feel anxious.

But there are many positives in this story.  The fact that your younger son has friends, has a girlfriend, and is involved in activities are all indications that he is engaged in life, is connected to others, and has healthy, age-appropriate interests.  These involvements suggest that he is managing this difficult time after his brother’s death well.  And by recognizing that these are wonderful things, you are supporting him in doing what he needs to do to heal and grow.  If he were to isolate himself, to be deeply sad most of the time, to find nothing in life that gave him joy, or if he were to get involved with drugs and/or alcohol, those could be signals that he’s not coping well and needs additional help. 

However, it certainly is OK for parents to check in with their teens.  Any parent wants to know where and with whom their teen is spending the night.  It’s fine to ask a teen to check in before he settles down for the night at someone else’s house.  It’s appropriate to want to meet his friends and to be able to talk to their parents.  That’s not smothering, it’s putting in an extra layer of precaution that helps everyone feel more secure.  If you can be matter-of-fact about these check-ins, not overdoing them by having too many in one evening or sounding panicky on the phone, your son can accept them as caring parenting.  In the same way, clear rules about safe driving, respecting curfews, and not abusing substances help keep teens safe. 

Helping Children: My Middle Schooler Blames Herself

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

Q.  My middle schooler blames herself for her mother’s death from suicide.  How can I help her? 

 A.  The first thing you can do is to listen to your child very carefully.  You are showing her that you are open to hearing all her worries and you respect that she is working to understand something that is very painful and hard to understand.

Once you have an idea of what she is feeling guilty about, you can begin to help her tell a more accurate story that doesn’t blame.  We’ve talked before about explaining a death by suicide as a death that happened because the loved one’s brain got sick, focusing on the illness rather than the specifics of the event.  You can tell that story again, specifically clearing up any misperceptions that your child has.  You can explain that her angry thoughts or words—or whatever else your child is stuck on—didn’t make Mom’s brain get the sickness of depression or bipolar disorder.  If alcohol or drugs were a part of the picture, older children and teens can be told that they only made things worse for Mom, making it harder for her to make good decisions.  Let your daughter know that scientists and doctors are still working hard to figure out why it is that some people, like Mom, get so depressed and confused that they think they are making things better by making their bodies stop working.  But doctors and scientists do know that it’s not because of anything their children have thought, said, or done.

Children of your daughter’s age can be challenged:  How many girls in the United States have ever talked back to their mothers?  How many of those mothers died by suicide?   (Put into this question whatever it is that your child is blaming herself or himself for.)  This helps to make it clear that some parent-child conflict happens in most families, but suicide does not.  It will become obvious to her that there is no connection.  It’s the illness that’s to blame, not the child.

Helping Children: Talking to a Child About Suicide

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

By Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti 

I want to picture how talking with a child about suicide might go.  Can you give me a sample conversation?

This story about a boy learning about his father’s death from suicide comes from our book 10 Steps for Parenting Your Grieving Children.  In this case, the conversations all took place in one afternoon.  Other children might not be ready to hear everything in this short a time span.  And some surviving parents might be in too much shock to have this long a conversation at first. If either child or parent needs to spread it out, this might be a series of conversations over the space of several hours, days, or weeks. 

Watch for the child’s reactions and listen carefully to her questions.  Then answer her questions one at a time.  Keep it simple and honest, without sensational details and without blaming anyone.  If it’s too hard for you to do alone, get help from someone you trust.  It’s important to remember that your child needs to have a story to hang on to and if a trusted adult doesn’t tell her, she’ll make one up from the bits and pieces she overhears and her own active imagination.  And that story may be even more upsetting than the reality you can help her with.

From the Fall of Freddie the Leaf: A Story for All Ages

"Where will we go when we die?"

"No one knows for sure. That's the great mystery!"

"Will we return in the Spring?"

"We may not, but Life will."

"Then what has been the reason for all of this?" Freddie continued ... "Why were we here at all if we only have to fall and die?"

Daniel answered in his matter-of-fact way, "It's been about the sun and the moon. It's been about happy times together. It's been about the shade and the old people and the children. It's been about colors in Fall. It's been about seasons. Isn't that enough?"

"That afternoon, in the golden light of dusk, Daniel let go. He fell effortlessly. He seemed to smile peacefully as he fell. "Goodbye for now, Freddie," he said.

Then, Freddie was all alone, the only leaf on his branch. The first snow fell the following morning. It was soft, white, and gentle; but it was bitter cold. There was hardly any sun that day, and the day was very short. Freddie found himself losing his color, becoming brittle. It was constantly cold and the snow weighed heavily upon him.

At dawn the wind came that took Freddie from his branch. It didn't hurt at all. He felt himself float quietly, gently and softly downward. As he fell, he saw the whole tree for the first time. How strong and firm it was! He was sure that it would live for a long time and he knew that he had been part of its life and made him proud.

Freddie landed on a clump of snow. It somehow felt soft and even warm. In this new position he was more comfortable than he had ever been. He closed his eyes and fell asleep. He did not know that Spring would follow Winter and that the snow would melt into water. He did not know that what appeared to be his useless dried self would join with the water and serve to make the tree stronger. Most of all, he did not know that there, asleep in the tree and the ground, were already plans for new leaves in the Spring.

Felice Leonardo "Leo" Buscaglia Ph.D., also known as "Dr Love," was an author and motivational speaker, and a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California.  You can find Freddie the Leaf in the Alliance of Hope Bookstore.

Helping Children: Navigating the New World

Vicki Scalzitti and Anne Berenberg

By Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti

"Ever since my husband died from suicide a few months ago, it seems like I can’t do anything right in my children’s eyes.  How can I understand this?  What can I do?"

When your husband died, it changed the world for your children and for you.    Everyone is making their way through unfamiliar territory they never wanted to be in.  Navigating this new world without a map or GPS is confusing, unsettling, and energy-consuming.  The pain that pops out at predictable moments (such as bedtime when Dad isn’t there to kiss the children good night) and unpredictable moments (such as when your teen happens to overhear a friend talking about her Dad teaching her how to drive) can feel like it’s knocking the person feeling it right off her feet.  No wonder everybody is on edge!

When children feel like their world has turned upside down, it’s too big a feeling to understand or express directly.  So they get upset at little things.  The blouse that isn’t right is standing for the incomprehensible wrongness of Daddy’s death.  And, since children tend to feel that it’s your job as the Mom to make everything right, that anger gets directed at you.  Even teens, who in their most rational moments know that Mom can’t undo this death or kiss away their hurt, can still react like much younger children at times—such as when they feel stressed and sad.  Teens also can ask a lot of big questions about why this all happened, getting angry when, of course, you don’t have all the answers.  They want the world to make sense and when it doesn’t, they often take out their upset on those around them, particularly the surviving parent.

The Aftermath: What I Tell My Granddaughter About Her Mother's Suicide

 

Caroline Donelle

By Caroline Donelle

 

My granddaughter just turned 3. Her mother--my daughter--died by suicide on February 9, a little more than a month before her 26th birthday, and six weeks before her daughter's third.

In the chaos of the weeks that followed, I wasn't thinking clearly about anything. I barely recall being able to function at all, but with the help of a close friend, I did. She helped me through that astonishing first week. I was numb, in shock, and truly, deeply sad.

Flowers and cards were delivered by the armloads. The phone never stopped ringing, the BlackBerry never stopped flashing, and sleep would not come. I couldn't eat, but I regularly cried a roomful of tears.

I was desperately racked by pain and sorrow. I was lost. So many questions and not enough answers. The only person able to offer any consolation was no longer here. I couldn't make that phone call anymore. It was all backward.

Discovering that my daughter had unexpectedly taken her own life was like being thrown into a world where nothing makes sense and nothing is clear. I couldn't envision a tomorrow followed by another torturous day, but every day the sun came up, and every evening the sun set.

Life went on and the days flew past. There were so many things to do. Like planning a funeral and packing up her apartment--the hardest things I have ever had to do. Every effort was cloaked in a silent scream.

It wasn't until after the funeral and the parting of so many, while still in the midst of my own impenetrable grief, that I began to focus on the 3 year old left without her mommy and being raised alone by her father. What do we do now?