Helping Your Child Grieve

Once a year, a group of slow-moving people gathers in my driveway to accomplish a major feat - walking across the street. They have cancer and are in the active phase of treatment, which may weaken them physically, but not in the ways that count. They head toward the Wellness House, a cancer support center that sits across from my house. Instead of staying home which they could easily justify, they come out to kick off the 5 and 10K walk that raises funds for the center. There are balloons, music and prizes. While the walkers set out, runners pace around trying to stay loose in the early morning air, dressed in team T-shirts with a loved one's picture on the front, or a team slogan like Cancer is a word, not a sentence.

The whole event is bathed in grief. No one wants to be there, wearing a picture of a person they love. No one wants to watch someone find it hard to walk across the street. No one would wish this trouble on another.

But life being what it is, you don't get what you want; you get what you get. And what you get gives you a chance to learn things you never wanted to learn. So the people show up, and what is revealed is the resolve that rests underneath the grief.

Any time of the week, I see folks walking through their doors for a support group meeting, or lecture, or exercise class. Some of them have cancer; some of them love someone who has cancer. I feel glad for them that they have this place to go. My friend Linda and her family had no such place when she faced cancer back in 1990, when her children were young teenagers. They navigated those waters on their own, and by 1991, Linda was gone, leaving her children to finish growing up without her.

The ones I see that hitch my heart the most are the children, hurrying in to join a bereavement support group. The arrival of grief into a child's life introduces reality, roughly and suddenly. It begins with the illness: Instead of Grandpa being the guy you love to play with, he becomes a sick person you have to take it easy around. If Grandpa dies, the child begins a lengthy walk with grief, and the adults who remain must learn how to help.

Some of the basics of helping children to grieve are well-understood:

Let them see you cry, and tell them that it is normal. It gives them permission to express emotion when they need to. And it lets them know that they don't need to hold theirs in to help you.

Communicate clear and realistic messages. "Grandma died." "Her body stopped working." "It cannot be fixed."

Avoid confusing statements like "She's gone away," or "She's sleeping," or "She's gone on a trip far away." Children are concrete thinkers and will misunderstand those references and wait for their loved one to show up one day.

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