I recently came across a draft of a paper I wrote for grandparents who wanted to know more about helping their grandchild who has experienced the death of a parent. I think it is worth repeating what I said for this blog. I have often thought about grandparents who are also mourning. They are often overlooked as they deal with their own grief, as well as the grief of others around them. If a child's parent has died, these grandparents are also grieving the death of their own child. Most of our attention is directed to the widow or widower and the children.
Grandparents are often the repositories of family history. In many ways, they can share their grief with their grandchildren by telling them about their now deceased parent and what he or she was like as a child. I have learned that this can be very comforting for both the grandparent and for their grieving grandchild. In the words of one pre-teenager: "My mother wouldn't talk to me about my father. I loved to visit my grandmother, who took out pictures of my father and told me all about his growing up. We sometimes cried together, but that felt good in its way."
In some instances, grandparents become the custodial parent if the children were being raised in a single parent family. When this happens, they need to know the same things a grieving parent should know. They are taking on the parenting role at a time in their own lives when they thought they were finished with this work. A grandmother reflected on what happened when her daughter became ill: " We were devastated when my daughter was told she had cancer and there was no good treatment that would save her life. We were planning on retiring and we were considering moving out of the area. Instead they moved in with us. We knew we were the only ones to offer to care for her two teen agers. We did what we needed to do. All our plans changed and sometimes I think her children are helping us as much as we help them."
Frequently, grandparents become the surrogate caretaker when the surviving parent has to work. In the words of an eight-year-old boy, " My grandmother is there when I get home. She doesn't live far away. She tries to have cookies and hot chocolate like my mother used to do, and she takes care of my little sister. We talk about school and sometimes we talk about my mother. I like that."
What grandparents need to learn about raising grieving children is similar to what the child's surviving parent needs to learn. Grandparents however, represent another generation who may be even more uncomfortable than their own adult children when talking about death with their grandchildren. They may have grown up in a time when it was thought best not to share this aspect of a family's life with the younger children. As I looked at my notes, I found a list that I think is important for all parents - of any generation - to consider. I rarely make lists, but here is one that I think is worth repeating.
- Be honest. A child's world has been shaken, and your honesty will give them a sense of trust.
- Use the words "dead," "death," and "dying." Children need concrete words and concepts they can understand. If you say "gone away," then a child will want to know when they will return and why did they want to leave them now.
- Allow (but don't force) children to attend the funeral services, and or the viewing. Prepare them for them for what they will see and hear. When a surviving parent or grandparent is occupied during the service or viewing, you may want to ask someone they trust to stay with the children in order to explain what is happening, to comfort them, and to answer questions.
- Be open about your own grief and feelings, not necessarily in great detail, but enough to let them know that you are grieving, which will help them absorb that it is all right to grieve. They may be facing unusual and strong feelings with which they have little experience, such as fear, anger, and sadness.
- Be tolerant of their feelings and behavior. Let them know it is okay to cry and to be sad.
- Encourage questions. Realize that their questions may be repeated frequently over the course of time. Be patient, even if you have to say the same thing many times.
- Offer some activities that may help the child honor and remember the parent who
has died. Activities could include making scrapbooks or photo albums, telling and writing stories, and creating family trees.
- Give them consistency as much as possible. It gives the children a sense of security. They are facing a changed family constellation. They may not be living in the same house anymore.
I will close with a comment from a widowed grandmother: "When my daughter told me, about a month after her husband was killed in a work accident, that she wanted to move in with me, I was scared about how I could help her and about how we would get along. When she told me she simply did not have enough money to maintain her own home any more, I felt I didn't have any choice. We found that if we talk about what needs doing, about what we can share, and about how to help each other, then it is working. I forgot what it was like to have children around, but we do try to keep it clear that they are her responsibility. I like being her helper with the children. I've grown a lot since my husband died, in becoming much more independent. I find that I am much more relaxed abut a lot of things, and that matters."
