ABOUT DYING

child life specialists or psychologists, who can talk to your child before, during and after their visit. They can help you with pre-visit preparation, such as explaining some of the things they may experience in the room. And during a visit, they can be a source of support and distraction for a child who is having a hard time coping.

ANSWERING ALL THEIR QUESTIONS

Children ask lots of questions. Thompson says that while many parents think their children expect them to have all the answers, they only need you to be honest. “If your child asks a difficult question, you can tell them ‘That’s a difficult question, and different people have different beliefs about that. What do you think?’”

It can be helpful to think through your answers for some more common questions so that, as Thompson says, “you feel less anxious in the moment and can offer your child honest explanations using simple, brief and concrete language that is appropriate for their age.”

For me, being able to answer my children’s questions about death and confronting my own questions made seeing my grandma in her last weeks more worth it. TALKING ABOUT IT In our visits, we talked about the weather, read books, looked at pictures and did other things that helped us forget why we came. When we said goodbye at the end of our first visit, my daughters gave her a glittery stone with the word “love” on it.

At the time, I thought it would be our last gift. But now, with memories of those visits and the journey we’ve taken with our talks on death and dying, I know there were many other gifts, for all of us. – The Washington Post