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When a Parent Dies
It was seeing the Britax Roundabout that did it.
There was Brad Cooper, carrying that top-of-the-line carseat in one hand, booster in the other, as police escorted him out of his house the afternoon after his wife’s body was found.
I have that carseat. Four of them, believe it or not. I bought them after many hours of online
research in my quest to find the safest car seat for my kids.
I guess Nancy Cooper read the same reviews I did.
I say Nancy and not her husband because -- let’s face it – moms are lord of the parenting gear. They do the legwork when it comes to strollers (Graco vs. Bugaboo), diapers (Huggies vs. Huggies Supreme), sippy cups, baby food, tricycles, bicycles and on and on.
But now Nancy’s out of the picture. Why isn’t too clear yet. The only truth is that two little kids had a mom early one Saturday morning. Then, by Monday evening, they didn’t.
How do you explain death to small children?
A few years ago, I took my then-3-year-old son to the hands-on Discovery Room at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. He was poking around in a plastic container full of beetles. One didn’t move. “He’s dead!” shrieked another child.
I hustled Aviv to another attraction. There was no way I was about to tackle that.
Eventually, the concept of death arose organically in our household. My grandmother – Aviv’s Nana -- had died when I was pregnant with my second child, Shira. Once she was born, we gave her the middle name of “Bette,” which incorporated both my grandmothers’ first names, Babette and Betty.
Aviv was intrigued. I told him he had known Nana and he insisted he remembered her, her diaphanous white hair and gravelly voice. In the car on the way to preschool, he asked what happened after she died. I sputtered something about heaven in an explanation that hardly made sense to my adult ears.
He accepted it just fine. On a trip to Harris Teeter, he and Shira clamored for balloons. When we reached home, he persuaded his unsuspecting little sister to let go of hers while she stood next to our sprawling oak tree. It sailed lazily above the treetops, ribbon tail dancing in the breeze, as Shira burst into tears.
“Shira sent her balloon to Nana,” Aviv jauntily announced. Coincidentally enough, his balloon had stayed moored to his wrist.
We’ve talked about death a fair amount over the last month. In June, we were supposed to vacation with close friends who moved from Chapel Hill to Indiana last year. Two days before our trip, my friend Sarah called to say her husband couldn’t make it. His father, sick with cancer, had been admitted to the hospital. A week later, he died.
After the funeral, my friend’s daughter noted her grandmother’s sadness and brainstormed the perfect 3-year-old solution. “She needs another husband,” Ella declared.
My friend’s son, 18 months, won’t recall anything about his grandfather.
Nancy Cooper had a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, both girls. It’s one thing to break the news that a beloved grandparent has died. It’s another thing entirely to explain that mommy is gone and she’s not coming back.
On a Facebook page devoted to the search for Nancy Cooper, erected during the three days she was missing, a Cary woman, a runner like Nancy, seethed with anger: “Who the hell has the right to take someone else’s life??? She was so young and now her children will probably not remember her when they get older. I really hope they catch this person!!!!”
Last year, I wrote an article about a mother of three who died of leukemia. Her children were enrolled in KidsCan!, a program at Rex Hospital for children of parents battling cancer. When I mentioned to the hospital therapist that I thought the youngest, who was 2 when his mother died, was the luckiest, she set me straight.
Ignorance isn’t bliss when it comes to losing a parent, she said. As the little boy grows older, she predicted he’d be angry and jealous of his siblings because they have something of their mother’s that he’ll never inherit: memories.
I find it impossible to even imagine what it must be like to explain a parent’s death to a young child. When my husband travels infrequently on business, my 3-year-old keeps asking where he is, even though she’s been told many times. She keeps asking when he’s returning, even though she’s been told that many times too. But what if the answer were never?
It’s hard enough for an adult to accept that sort of finality.
A child shouldn’t have to.
Bonnie usually appears on Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom. Join our discussion about the Cooper case in our forums. Read ncwriter4's blog post about the case as well. And go here for updates about the case through the day.
Bonnie Rochman
Bonnie is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
She lives in Raleigh and has written for
The News & Observer since 1998. She has covered political unrest in
the Middle East and chronicled the experiences of entrepreneurs in
Vietnam, but that was long before her new bosses -- there are three of
them, one more demanding than the next -- presenting her with her most
challenging assignment to date: juggling the needs and perceived wants
of boy/girl preschoolers and their baby sister.
Bonnie also writes kids music reviews for TriangleMom2Mom.
It was seeing the Britax Roundabout that did it.
There was Brad Cooper, carrying that top-of-the-line carseat in one hand, booster in the other, as police escorted him out of his house the afternoon after his wife’s body was found.
I have that carseat. Four of them, believe it or not. I bought them after many hours of online research in my quest to find the safest car seat for my kids.
I guess Nancy Cooper read the same reviews I did.
I say Nancy and not her husband because -- let’s face it – moms are lord of the parenting gear. They do the legwork when it comes to strollers (Graco vs. Bugaboo), diapers (Huggies vs. Huggies Supreme), sippy cups, baby food, tricycles, bicycles and on and on.
But now Nancy’s out of the picture. Why isn’t too clear yet. The only truth is that two little kids had a mom early one Saturday morning. Then, by Monday evening, they didn’t.
How do you explain death to small children?
A few years ago, I took my then-3-year-old son to the hands-on Discovery Room at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. He was poking around in a plastic container full of beetles. One didn’t move. “He’s dead!” shrieked another child.
I hustled Aviv to another attraction. There was no way I was about to tackle that.
Eventually, the concept of death arose organically in our household. My grandmother – Aviv’s Nana -- had died when I was pregnant with my second child, Shira. Once she was born, we gave her the middle name of “Bette,” which incorporated both my grandmothers’ first names, Babette and Betty.
Aviv was intrigued. I told him he had known Nana and he insisted he remembered her, her diaphanous white hair and gravelly voice. In the car on the way to preschool, he asked what happened after she died. I sputtered something about heaven in an explanation that hardly made sense to my adult ears.
He accepted it just fine. On a trip to Harris Teeter, he and Shira clamored for balloons. When we reached home, he persuaded his unsuspecting little sister to let go of hers while she stood next to our sprawling oak tree. It sailed lazily above the treetops, ribbon tail dancing in the breeze, as Shira burst into tears.
“Shira sent her balloon to Nana,” Aviv jauntily announced. Coincidentally enough, his balloon had stayed moored to his wrist.
We’ve talked about death a fair amount over the last month. In June, we were supposed to vacation with close friends who moved from Chapel Hill to Indiana last year. Two days before our trip, my friend Sarah called to say her husband couldn’t make it. His father, sick with cancer, had been admitted to the hospital. A week later, he died.
After the funeral, my friend’s daughter noted her grandmother’s sadness and brainstormed the perfect 3-year-old solution. “She needs another husband,” Ella declared.
My friend’s son, 18 months, won’t recall anything about his grandfather.
Nancy Cooper had a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, both girls. It’s one thing to break the news that a beloved grandparent has died. It’s another thing entirely to explain that mommy is gone and she’s not coming back.
On a Facebook page devoted to the search for Nancy Cooper, erected during the three days she was missing, a Cary woman, a runner like Nancy, seethed with anger: “Who the hell has the right to take someone else’s life??? She was so young and now her children will probably not remember her when they get older. I really hope they catch this person!!!!”
Last year, I wrote an article about a mother of three who died of leukemia. Her children were enrolled in KidsCan!, a program at Rex Hospital for children of parents battling cancer. When I mentioned to the hospital therapist that I thought the youngest, who was 2 when his mother died, was the luckiest, she set me straight.
Ignorance isn’t bliss when it comes to losing a parent, she said. As the little boy grows older, she predicted he’d be angry and jealous of his siblings because they have something of their mother’s that he’ll never inherit: memories.
I find it impossible to even imagine what it must be like to explain a parent’s death to a young child. When my husband travels infrequently on business, my 3-year-old keeps asking where he is, even though she’s been told many times. She keeps asking when he’s returning, even though she’s been told that many times too. But what if the answer were never?
It’s hard enough for an adult to accept that sort of finality.
A child shouldn’t have to.
Bonnie usually appears on Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom. Join our discussion about the Cooper case in our forums. Read ncwriter4's blog post about the case as well. And go here for updates about the case through the day.
Bonnie Rochman
Bonnie is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Monday.
She lives in Raleigh and has written for The News & Observer since 1998. She has covered political unrest in the Middle East and chronicled the experiences of entrepreneurs in Vietnam, but that was long before her new bosses -- there are three of them, one more demanding than the next -- presenting her with her most challenging assignment to date: juggling the needs and perceived wants of boy/girl preschoolers and their baby sister.
Bonnie also writes kids music reviews for TriangleMom2Mom.
Comments
I was 5 when a parent died. Growing up, we kids who had also lost family members seemed to gravitate toward each other, mainly because they were the only people we could talk to about our experience without anyone getting weirded out.
I can tell you that what 'experts' believe kids go through, and what they recommend you say/do seemed to change about every 10 years, and most of it is pure bunk.
We kids understood death a lot better than grown-ups ever thought. (In my case, I completely understood when told he had cancer and was going to die). Most of us had a much more matter-of-fact attitude about it than adults do. (Many kids find some things concurrently gross and cool.) We also didn't dwell on the matter or fantasize about what it would be like to have that parent as much as grown-ups would have thought.
However, each of us felt terrible feelings of isolation in our grief and experience. Parents would not allow us to talk about death in the way we needed, or to grieve in the way we needed to. Sometimes we were actually punished, but sometimes it wasn't a direct order, but "understood" (or perhaps the grown-ups silence on the matter made us think we weren't allowed).
Another thing we all resented into adulthood was being kept away from vigils, memorials, wakes, funerals, etc.
And finally, it created a really morose household to remember the annivesary of the death without also remembering the celebratory anniversaries, like birthdays.
Today's parents are better, but sometimes take it too far--they push too hard to get a kid to talk who doesn't want to, and kids complain they are sick of being analyzed and counseled over and over.
So my suggestions are:
(1) give matter-of-fact details at the level a kid wants and can understand (if they need more, they will ask--so answer them until they are satisfied).
(2) let your kids know it's ok to talk, to cry, etc.
(3) let them see YOU talking, crying, feeling what you are feeling--and to share in it. Be sad TOGETHER. Work through it TOGETHER.
(4) Ask the kids if they want to go to the services, but be on watch for when they are ready to leave, too.
(5) remember the anniversary of the loss--AND the birthdays and other celebratrory days.
(6) Get some of the kid books on loss, read them with the kids, and let them have them to read or look at on their own. Hospice also provides some help.