People often buy pets for their kids to teach them responsibility and allow them to experience one of life’s hardest experiences, grief. But if you don’t have pets or they haven’t passed away yet, what can you do to prepare your kids for the death of a loved one?

Go to funerals

A few years back we could have left our kids at home instead of taking them to the funeral of a relative. He didn’t mean much to the kids and they only knew him in his old, smelly stage of life. So why risk upsetting them? Kids certainly don’t hold back in their honest appraisals of people do they?! I remember being appalled as a kid at the wrinkles, the makeup, the blue rinse, the frailty and the smell of old age. Where had the vigor gone? Even as a child you don’t need someone to tell you this is decay. Of course attending the funeral of a ‘distant’ relative is actually a soft way of educating your kids about loss, grief and mortality. The topic is introduced for you and there are lots of opportunities to answer questions related to life’s end. So I say, go. Talk about what the day will involve, who will be there, how they’ll dress and what it means. Of course you may not be able to avoid the most difficult parenting questions of all, ‘Mum, what happens after we die?’ ‘Will I see you again?’

 Funerals are a great leveler. No matter where you’re up to…death asks big questions of you.

What is life about?

Where should my priorities be?

What can be gained if it all ends here?

What now?

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Ecclesiastes 7:2

Grandma

For my whole life I have had the most wonderful grandma. My kids didn’t know grandma in her best years. But they still knew something of her tenderness and ‘fun’ as I did as a child. We used to love visiting her; it was part of the fun of life. In recent years we’ve visited her to keep her spirits up, the roles have changed.

As a parent your first instinct is to protect your kids and let them remember grandma in her better days. But sometimes you don’t get to say goodbye. We wanted the kids to have one last visit. We thought it would be better to experience this loss tangibly, rather than shield them. I don’t know what we would have done if grandma was in lots of pain. We took the kids in to see her so they could say good bye, hold her hand, and stroke her hair. She was a shadow of herself. Crumpled over and shallow breathing, the colour of her eyes faded, the soul retreating.

At least this visit our kids could respond however they wanted. We encouraged them but didn’t force anything on them; we wanted to let them know it was Ok. We prayed with her and we let her know our love for her one last time. We spoke of the hope of eternal life in Jesus that she held onto until the end. Who knows, perhaps she could hear and be uplifted one more time before she went.

That’s the great comfort of Jesus. The joy of tomorrow as we leave this wrinkly old tent behind.

Purposeful Parenting is a blog series written by Stephen Shearsby; get them each week straight to your inbox by subscribing to www.antonsantics.com