What do children understand about death?

A few weeks ago my cat died.  She curled up and climbed under the gas tank in our back yard and quietly died.  We can't reach her.  My son (he is a young adult) told me each day he climbs back in the bushes and looks at her.  He told me this has actually given him peace in her death and here I pause and wonder about our children and the relationship we build with them regarding life and death and everything in between.

When he first told me he was looking at her I may have at first gasped, as I wondered if this was creepy, scary, weird? I was reminded of many years ago when our classroom pet fish died.  Some of the 3 and 4 year old students said "We want to see it."  When I placed it on the table one student was very disturbed, and she said nervously, "I changed my mind, put it away." Last year when my father passed away I went to sit with him at the hospital before he was picked up by the funeral parlor.  I played a song, I talked to him, my sister and I cried and laughed together in this sterile, cold room.  Saying goodbye is an important part of the process of death.

What life cycle events happen in our children's lives and how do we sit with our children even when we find ourselves uncomfortable or emotional? 

Side note... did you know that funeral homes were originally created by a cabinet maker?  Prior to this families would clean and lay the deceased out in their homes on their own for family and friends to visit and say goodbye.  As we move forward in our inventions, ideas and creations what do we lose in the process?  How is our humanity changed and as we look back what do we learn from this process?  I am not necessarily looking to go back, yet as we move forward what do we let go of and what do we hold on to in our traditions regarding life cycle events?

In school children often play games in which they shoot someone, kill someone and someone dies.  As they play these games many of us are uncomfortable.  Might children be expressing how they are processing life and death? As they play these games what are they trying to figure out?  Recently I walked by the playground and I asked two children laying on the ground what they were doing? They said, "We are pretending to be dead horses," and then they laughed and ran off.   

In a classroom more recently some 3 and 4 year old students were looking at a few butterflies that had come out of cocoons, when one of them noticed a few did not have wings and a few of them were not moving.  The children began to talk about this amongst themselves, "Can they fly with one wing," a student asked? "I am not sure," said another.  "I think one of them is dead," one student said to which a student replied, "I can bring him back alive. " Then a student said, "You can't bring them back alive." When these conversations occur children are processing their knowledge of life and death.  Do we hear these conversations, do we sit in the discomfort to allow space for conversation and thoughtfulness to occur? I hope so! 

We build our own fears and emotions to death and share those feelings with our children.  What if we changed how we responded to children when they are faced with death and sickness. When our cat was dying we discussed taking her to the vets to be put down.  Together as a family we decided we wanted her to have a natural death at home unless we felt she was in severe discomfort or pain.  We watched her each day and asked each other what we thought.  We wanted her to die in the comfort of our home, with our touches on her frail body, and all of our love as we gazed into her eyes on her dying days. 

As children play with friends they live life, and all that that includes.  They laugh, they cry, they run, they die.  They fall to the ground in their pretending!  They are the baby, the grandma, the dog and the dead horse.  They try it all on as they move through their games.  I notice their strength and bravery as they move through their play.  One day these experiences will present themselves in their lives, hopefully when they are much older, and they will have had these play experiences to fall back on.  They will fall down and get back up.  They will know how to cry, how to laugh and how to face each day with all that it brings.

For now my son and I are said goodbye to our little cat.  We are not rushing the process, yet slowly taking the time needed to mourn her loss. 

Maybe some traditions are meant to be changed, or slowed down in life and what is right for one may not be in the best interest of another.  So we said goodbye to our cat named "Scrapella."  I found her around one year ago, a starving old cat lady with cancer, we gave her one good year more and then we said goodbye. We faced her death head on.  In discomfort, and in peace that this is life and death as we know it.  Not everything has a happy ending or a simple ending, somethings just end sadly.  That is ok.  I wrote this article a few months ago and never published it.  I wonder why I made that decision? What is my own relationship with life and death and how does this appear in my own interactions with children?

Always learning, always growing, always reflecting....