We are extremely lucky that my girls still have four healthy grandparents.\u00a0 They also have four great-grandparents.\u00a0 We are also very fortunate that they have not yet had to deal with the death of a family member.\u00a0 Unfortunately, health concerns throughout both sides of the family are bringing the reality of death ever closer to our family.<\/p>\n
The last death of a close family member was the loss of my Nana (my paternal grandmother) when I was 7 months pregnant with\u00a0Honeybun.\u00a0 It\u00a0was an extremely difficult time for me as I was very close with her and had been her primary caregiver for the 6 months leading up to the end.\u00a0 She was so excited to be a great-grandmother and while I was devastated at the time by her missing the opportunity by only a few months, I am now glad that my children never knew her as she was at the end (she became very confused and honestly mean\u2026she often called me \u201cfat\u201d then laughed and told me I needed to go on a diet when I was very, very pregnant).\u00a0 I am glad that instead of them having their own, possibly negative memories of her, I can share the wonderful memories I have from before she was sick.<\/p>\n
What my children (especially\u00a0Honeybun) have experienced, though, is the loss of animals.\u00a0 While we still have our two spunky kitties, hubby\u2019s\u00a0parents have lost a few loved pets recently and it has helped the girls understand death a bit better (the extreme media coverage of Michael Jackson didn\u2019t hurt either).\u00a0 I don\u2019t sugarcoat it for them.\u00a0 They know every living thing dies eventually and are okay with that.\u00a0 Where they still struggle, though, is with the grief part of death.<\/p>\n
Honeybun<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>doesn\u2019t always understand why people are sad about death. She isn\u2019t sure how to react and often tries to make jokes about it.\u00a0 She thinks it\u2019s funny to remind me that Great-Nana died because she know it still chokes me up.\u00a0 Just the other day while driving home she proclaimed that Great-Gran\u2019ma (my maternal grandmother) died.\u00a0 When I told her that she didn\u2019t she replied \u201cwell she\u2019s going to in a few days\u201d.\u00a0 I said that would make me very sad and she said \u201cwhy mommy, everyone dies.\u201d\u00a0 At other times she is very concerned about death and says things like \u201cmommy, I don\u2019t want you die.\u00a0 I\u2019ll miss you too much.\u201d<\/p>\n We talk a lot about how most people die when they are very old or very sick and hopefully mommy and daddy won\u2019t die for a very long time.\u00a0 It\u2019s been very important to me that our girls understand the life cycle, that they understand dying is a part of life so that when we do encounter it I\u2019m not the mommy on some forum asking \u201cshould I tell my daughter her grandmother died?\u201d (I\u2019ve seen that question more than once).\u00a0 I think it will also help with being able to help explain the grieving process.\u00a0 We won\u2019t have to focus on why people die because that\u2019s already been covered but instead we can focus on why we are sad.\u00a0 I always like to take things one step at a time.<\/p>\n Honeybun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are extremely lucky that my girls still have four healthy grandparents.\u00a0 They also have four great-grandparents.\u00a0 We are also very fortunate that they have not yet had to deal with the death of a family member.\u00a0 Unfortunately, health concerns throughout both sides of the family are bringing the reality of death ever closer to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-mommys-life","category-family-ties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10056,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/10056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}