Answering Questions About Death

Posted on by March 17, 2014avatar
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Questions

NOTE: See book giveaway opportunity at end of this post.

The last two weeks, Melissa Amodeo was my guest.  She told two stories of grief in children as it pertains to the loss of a loved one.  The first week, she wrote of her own child-hood grief in the death of her grandfather, Alex.

Years later, she was faced with having to lead her own children through 11 deaths in one year.  Yes, you read right – 11 family members and friends died in those young girl’s lives, all in one year.  The good news was:  Melissa had been preparing them for death through their yearly Library Summer Reading Program.  How wise this young mother was to add a book on death to their reading program.  How many of us think to do that?

As I read her this heartwarming story about the Summer Reading Program with her girls, I couldn’t help but think what Norman H. Wright, author of Recovering From the Losses in Life,   had to say:

Children are often overlooked in times of losses in their lives.
Probably, the number one reason is because the primary adult in the child’s life
just doesn’t know how to help them.

Thank God for the wisdom Melissa used in preparing her children about a reality of life.  As she said, “they not only learned a lot about death, but about heaven, too.”  No doubt when her girls ran head on into so many deaths in a short period of time, their mother had already helped build a foundation under them that, not only helped them grieve through those losses, but also were anxious to help their young friends who lost their father.

So, today, I would encourage you to get involved as Melissa did in a child’s life prior to a death if at all possible. One of the ways you can get involved is by preparing yourself to know the answers to some of the most common questions children might ask that will help satisfy their curiosity and confusion about death. These might include:

  1. Why do people die?
  2. What causes death?
  3. Where do people go after they die?
  4. What about me?  When am I going to die?
  5. I did not always obey my Dad.  Was it my fault he died?
  6. Since my Dad died, is it now my responsibility to take care of my mom?
  7. Sometimes I hear adults say when someone dies that they are just sleeping.  When will they wake up?
  8. I heard someone say that it was God’s will and a part of His plan for my mom to die.  Why would God take her from me?
  9. How can I tell my friends at school about my mom’s death?
  10. What is a funeral and wake?

Let’s face it — none of us know all there is to know about death.  1 Corinthians 13:12 says: “For now, we see through a glass darkly, then face to face; now I know in part.” 

The word “NOW” in this verse means at the present time we are living here on this earth.  Just like looking through a dark and dirty mirror, we can’t see everything clearly, we won’t know everything there is to know about death NOW in our present life.

However, we have a responsibility as caring adults to be open and honest to answer questions we do know about death, rather than making it a taboo subject.  It helps the child feel comfortable in expressing his sadness.

As an incentive for you to prepare yourself to be able to answer questions a child might ask not only about death but also about bullying, moving, losses of pets and divorce, I would like to give away a copy of the Adult Reference Guide for Helping Hurting Children, which answers many of the questions about these different losses.

Should you like a chance to win the book, simply subscribe to this blog no later than Monday, March 23, 2014 by midnight Central Time. After the deadline I will have a drawing of all those who subscribed and the name pulled from the hat will receive the book. I will notify the winner via a comment on this post and by personal email.

How Summer Reading Held Us Together

Posted on by February 27, 2014avatar
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milissa daughters

My guest last week and again this week is Melissa Amodeo.  Last week, Melissa told of the death of her Grandpa Alex when she was a child.  Today, she tells a remarkable way in which she prepared her own children for death.  I know you will be inspired by her wisdom.

 My daughters and I both love reading and writing.  We took on the tradition of summer reading together when they started school.  On summer breaks, we always have enlisted in the Library Reading Program and read as many books as possible while enjoying the lazy days of summer, soaking in the sun.

In the spring of 2009, while volunteering to work at my children’s school’s yearly Book Fair, I came across a book named, Each Little Bird That Sings, by Deborah Wiles.  The book seemed interesting.  It was about a 10-year-old girl whose family owned a funeral home.  She grew up around funerals.  The book’s introduction seemed like it dealt with death which is a part of life, but in a way that a child could comprehend and with light humor.  It seemed well written, so I decided to buy the book and read it first.  I had intentions of making this book part of our summer reading time together.  I read the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

That summer, each day my daughters and I would sit closely together and I would read to them pages of the book.  It talked about the reality of death and put it in a manner that a child could understand.  It also included real emotions like sadness and humor.  My daughters enjoyed the book as much as I did.

Little did we know the summer of 2009 would start a domino effect of deaths of close family members. The book prepared, not only my children, but myself for what would come. We lost 11 close family members and a close family friend in the months that would follow.  In one year, my children would go to more funerals than most people go to in a lifetime.  Every funeral they went to, they knew the person and they had to deal with grief.

They learned to not fear death and to trust God. They also learned more about Heaven.  They learned that death is a part of life, but it is not the end of life, only the end of life as we know it here on earth. Their faith grew.  They began to talk differently and to experience funerals differently.  They began to show compassion to the survivors of the ones who passed on.

I saw so much evidence of the things they learned when my daughter’s best friend’s father passed away in the summer of 2013.  She wanted to be there for her friend. At the wake service, she and her sister sat next to her friend and her sister the entire evening. The night before, she was concerned about how to help her friend since this was so serious.  I told her, “You do not have to say anything, just be there for her. She will never forget those who were there for her.”

So, that is what she and her sister did.  They sat there and they were there for her friend and her sister.  I think that was pretty brave and pretty compassionate for two preteen girls to do.  It not only helped the bereaved, it helped them, too.

Who would have thought that a Library Summer Reading Program would be instrumental in preparing Melissa’s two children for up-coming deaths in their family?

And that, my friends, is what this website and my book, Helping Hurting Children is all about — encouraging parents, grandparents or any caring adult, to get involved in helping a child cope with losses.

My thanks to Melissa for sharing her heart-warming stories and her wisdom. Leave her a comment and tell her how she inspired you to get involved in helping hurting children.

Join me here next week, where I will give you other suggestions on how to help a child going through the death of a loved one.

Grandpa Alex

Posted on by February 27, 2014avatar
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cologne bottle

I welcome as my guest today, Melissa Amodeo.  I became acquainted with Melissa through the Orange County Christian Writers’ Guild of which we both are members.  We also attend the same church. Melissa resides in Orange, Texas with her husband, Tim, and their two daughters. I know you will be inspired by her stories this week and next week.

Martha asked me to write about childhood experiences with grief. Immediately, I knew I had to write my own personal experience in dealing with childhood grief and also that of my two children. I try to capture both stories of loss through the eyes of a child.

Today, I want to share my childhood experience in the death of my Grandpa Alex.

My relationship with my grandfather was a memorable one, though it was short lived. Every morning my grandfather would call me on his old rotary phone and ask if I thought the “Old Bird was going to catch the Coyote today?” I would say, “I don’t know Paw Paw.”  Every morning I would run down the walkway that led from my house to his and he would be waiting for me.  We would go to the kitchen and prepare a snack to eat as we watched “Our Show”. We would usually cut open a small bag of corn chips each, pour in some milk, and grab a spoon.  I would sit at my grandfather’s feet as we sat in front of the television and waited for the cartoon to come on.  Every day the show ended the same way; the Roadrunner never caught the Coyote.

My grandfather would laugh and laugh.  I can still see his dark chocolate skin and his pearly white smile as he tilted his head back and laughed at that “old bird.”  My grandfather would then tell me stories, some he made up, others I found out later were real childhood tales from books that I would read when I entered school, like the Tortoise and the Hare.  He told the best stories and he never tired of telling them. I never tired of listening.

My grandfather loved to fish and he had a boat, which he would let me play in. For hours I would sit in that boat and have adventures, pretending to take voyages around the seas of the world.  When the neighborhood kids found out about my games in the boat, they started playing in the boat as well. My grandfather told me I couldn’t play in the boat any longer because the other kids didn’t respect his boat like I did.  That made me sad.

I remember the day my grandfather passed away.  I was six years old.  My mother was pregnant with twins.  We lived in a small mobile home and my parents had bought a new bigger one.  My grandfather had told my dad if they needed to come through his yard with the new mobile home it would be okay, but not to hit his orange trees in the front yard. Well, when they pulled the new mobile home in, they had to go through my grandfather’s yard because the street was too narrow and they hit my grandfather’s orange tree.

Later that day, my grandmother came home early from work and she was crying. My uncle and aunt came over to my grandparent’s house as well. They were all crying. My mother told me that my grandfather had died.  I didn’t quite understand what that meant.  I knew it must not be good because everyone was very sad.

My two cousins and I were standing on the porch and they were crying and my cousin looked at me puzzled because I wasn’t crying and said, “Paw Paw is dead.  Don’t you know what that means”?   I just looked at him and I felt a twinge in my chest. Still I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew something terrible was wrong with my Paw Paw.

When the time came for the funeral, I saw my father cry for the first time.  I saw my grandfather dressed in a suit, lying in a shiny closed box.  He didn’t move.  I reached to touch him, but I pulled my hand back.  I looked up at my father and he was crying. My mother was crying as well. I started crying.

Days later, I kept looking out the window, waiting to see Paw Paw drive up.  He was a cement finisher and their yard was filled with many of his cement projects, such as: a turning stone cement table and a pink cement pad he parked his Cadillac on. I spent hours drawing on the cement with white seashells and tracing my fingers over the stones in the table because it reminded me of him.  I kept waiting to hear the phone ring.  It was silent.  Paw Paw never came back.

I asked Maw Maw when Paw Paw was coming back, and she said, “Aw chere babe. Paw Paw is not coming back; he died.  He gone,” and she hugged me.  I don’t remember much after that, but when I became an adult, my grandmother gave me a blue glass bottle shaped like a car that used to contain cologne that my grandfather used to wear.  When I was a girl, he collected them.  They always sat on a coffee table and I was told not to touch them. I always touched them!

I opened the bottle, it still smelled like his cologne, years later.  It brought back so many sweet memories of the time I spent with my Grandpa Alex.

Couldn’t you just visualize Melissa as a little girl wondering what was going on with Grandpa Alex?  Did her story bring back a memory from your childhood of the loss of a loved one?  If so, in the comment section, share it with us.

Join Melissa right here next week.  You don’t want to miss how she prepared her own children for death.