wish famili
Saying Goodbye
Helping children learn to deal with death.
home and their parents
would be there sitting shiv-
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
.AppleTree Editor
little girl whose father had just died was corn-
forted when a large packet of letters arrived at
her door. It was from her school classmates;
each wrote to express concern and sympathy.
"I'm sorry to hear about your dad," most letters
opened. "I hope you will be all right."
One letter from a boy began with the usual condo-
lences. Then he added, "I'm glad it was your father and
not mine."
That, David Techner says, is the difference between
children and adults.
When adults think of death, they are often afraid or
in denial or simply without a clue. They tiptoe around
the subject, as though simply saying the word "death"
is enough to make it happen.
Children, however, approach death the same way
they live life: with wonder and curiosity — and with
honesty-
Techner, whose film Generation to Generation won an
Emmy Award, is funeral director of Ira Kaufman
Chapel in Southfield and a speaker who travels nation-
wide discussing ways to help children learn about
death.
He also has the kind of intimate
knowledge of children and death
that would make most people trem-
ble. He had a child, Alicia, who died when she was 1
year old. In his professional life, he regularly counsels
families who have just experienced a child's death. He
leads children on tours of the funeral home, where he
must be ready to answer every question their imagina-
tive little minds can come up with.
"If you're in the coffin and there's no bathroom, how
can you pee and poop?" children will ask.
Techner's approach and his advice to all parents and
care givers: Speak the truth. "Honesty," he says, "is the
best policy."
Many families make the mistake of never talking
about death with their children. Not because they are
trying to avoid the issue, but because they are young
and healthy, and even grandparents are fairly young
and healthy, and no one in the family has a terminal
disease.
Techner says it's best instead to acknowledge early on
that death is part of life. No matter our health and the
comfort and apparent safety of our lives, death can
come at any time. Meeting death unprepared only
makes the pain worse.
"It wasn't long ago that parents didn't even talk about
death, ever," Techner says. "In Europe, parents didn't
have to say anything about death to kids. Older family
members lived in the home, and they died, so death
was part of the process.
"Then society became modernized; and we started
sending people away to die, so no one confronted the
physical reality of their situation. Kids would just come
ah."
Parents today may be hes-
itant to speak about death,
but "kids want to know
about it," says Techner, the
author of A Candle for
Grandpa. And don't think
they don't already have
ideas.
"Thanks to the TV
remote, you have 100 chan-
nels; and no matter how good
a parent you are, you don't
know 100 percent of the time
what your child is watching.
"We cannot turn on the televi-
sion without finding out who died
in Iraq, without seeing some murder
story, without hearing a child was killed in a drive-
by shooting. If we don't think that has an effect on our
children, we're living in a fantasy world."
The best approach, Techner says, is to answer a
child's question honestly, no matter his age.
"Oftentimes, people draw the line
in the sand at age 4," he says.
Before that, parents think children
simply aren't ready. "My philosophy
is that age is not as important as maturity I know 4-
year-olds who are better prepared than 6-year-olds."
COVER STORY
Does Death Hurt?
Children have a number of questions about the physi-
cal aspects of death.
Techner tells children, and he advises parents to do
the same, that they need not worry about the lack of a
toilet in the coffin because when death occurs the body
stops working. No one will need to use the bathroom
anymore, just as they will not need to brush their teeth
or take a shower.
"But what about all those cuts my brother got when
he was in the car accident?" others will ask. "Won't he
still be hurting from those?"
Techner explains that "whatever happens from the
point of death and beyond doesn't hurt."
Can dead people see, children want to know, and
what happens to their bodies once they are in the
ground? How long will it take until the bones disap-
pear?
Many children wonder why bodies are buried.
"The best answer is the truth: We need some place
to put the bodies, and we can't store them in the closet
or the trunk of a car. Also, with burial we know exactly
where the body is."
What children will rarely say, but was so well
expressed in the letter of the boy who told his friend,
"I'm glad it was your father and not mine," is that they
are afraid not of death issues, but life ones.
"If a family friend dies of a heart attack, the most
important thing you can do for your kids is get a phys-
ical," Techner says. "Then reassure your child: I've been
to the doctor and he says my heart is fine.
"A lot of time with death, all.a kid wants to know is,
`Could that happen to me?'"
Children wonder about the unanswerable. A little
girl is killed in a car accident. The children want to
know did she hurt a lot, did she know what was hap-
pening, where was God when she was killed?
"Sometimes, you just have to give the facts," Techner
says. "Sometimes there aren't answers."
At work, Techner receives a number of calls on sensi-
tive cases, as with suicides or when an impending
death may come at a time when fun plans are in the
future.
"I've had parents call and one will say, 'My father
[the child's grandfather] has pancreatic cancer and he
has six months to live. But my son will be at camp
then. So should we tell him about his grandfather and
if so, when?'"
Techner advises such parents to be direct with the
child. With cancer, there is no definite date of death.
The grandfather might die in six months when the boy
is at camp, or he might die tomorrow, or he might last
another few years. With this knowledge, the family can
then decide together — especially with the boy's input
— whether camp is the best option.
Parents also will call and say, "My uncle committed
suicide 28 years ago and I think I need to tell my 6-
year-old about it."
The information does not need to be hidden, but
there's no need to volunteer such facts, especially with
small children, Techner says. Answer questions honest-
ly, but instead of going into details about suicide or
murder when a child is still so young, focus on the life
SAYING GOODBYE on page 27
.
„TN
6/18
2004
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