In the Clouds

My son grabs my suitcase from the closet floor, places his Grinch pillow and Moana doll inside, and wheels it around the bedroom. "I'm going to visit Grandpa," he says. Twice yesterday and once the day before, he fingered the glass case that protects the model ship his grandfather built and said, "Grandpa made that."

He drops the suitcase handle and asks, "Where is Grandpa now?"

"Grandpa died," I say, for the hundredth time.

While the word "Grandpa" sails from my son's mouth, it clanks out of mine. "Grandpa" died well before he could have become a grandpa. He was 40; my sisters were ten, eight, and seven; and I was six and in kindergarten. I am past 40 now, and interest in Grandpa has surfaced in my son just as he's turned six and started kindergarten. My father-in-law died when my son was two, my mother when he was three, and he knows he should have more grandparents. He senses he's been cheated out of some fundamental thing.

"So he's in the clouds?" my son asks.

"Yes," I say, condoning this braid of truth and fantasy. I'm clear with the verb (died) and the reason (died in a car crash). I'm a pragmatist who wants my children to know what death means. But then I allow my boy to believe whatever he wants about people after they die. For him, they float up to the clouds to exist again, possibly full bodied, perched on a wisp. Dead people orbit, passing over our house like clockwork. I wonder whether he overheard the phrase "pass away" and misunderstood. Though I've told him that people never come back, I know he thinks that when he dies, he will go on a cloud adventure and climb down to earth whenever he wants to.

"How did he get up to the clouds?" is his next question, which I answer with another question.

"How do you think he got up to the clouds?"

He looks at the suitcase lying on the floor and doesn't answer.

________

Near our house in Connecticut is a center for grieving children. Its founder established the center when his wife died suddenly at age 39, six years after my father died. The center has other locations too, all across the state, one just 20 minutes from my childhood home. Its website is loaded with resources on how to help children cope with death. Yes, encourage children to ask questions about death. Yes, take children to a funeral or memorial service if they are prepared for what they will see and hear. Yes, explain what death is, clearly and honestly. No, do not use the terms "passed away" or "lost" or "sleeping." A child may become terrified of getting lost or going to sleep. Some children blame themselves—help alleviate their guilt. Some children regress—accept it. A few children may become suicidal—look for signs.

Children start to understand the permanence of death at about age six. They might start using the words "died" and "dead," ask about the different ways people die, and notice other dead things.

________

Now that my son is old enough to watch full-length feature films, we watch movies all the time. He handles Finding Nemo and the death of the mother clownfish with some under-blanket hiding. Frozen yields concerns about the storm and whether the ship really does crack apart with the parents onboard. A single question about Curious George is whether he had monkey parents in the jungle before being adopted by the Man with the Yellow Hat.

But when, during a weekend with relatives, we tried The Lion King, my son couldn't bear to finish the opening scene. Something about the circle of life got to him. He ran to the bedroom, and I followed to prepare him for the story, that the father lion, who is king, is caught in a stampede. This is important, I said. The uncle lion is very mean and wants to be king, so he caused the stampede in the first place...