[quote NastyBlouse]@LivinLaVidaLoki I agree, I think a lot of people haven’t experienced it.
My mother and I sat with my grandmother as she died. It was all kinds of things — upsetting, sad, boring, respectful/honouring, occasionally darkly funny and at times oddly life-affirming. After she died, the lovely care home assistant said we were the first family members she’d seen in several months who had sat with their relative as they slipped away. ‘They normally just leave it to us,’ she said.
As a society we tend to euphemise death, don’t talk about it frankly, and of course for many it’s something that happens ‘away’ — in a hospital, nursing home, or a hospice for example. It’s easy to hide away from, if someone is that way inclined. Except a person can’t hide from it. Besides tax it’s life’s only other certainty!
My friend is a funeral celebrant and she has said before that it’s surprising how many people fudge death with not just themselves but also their children. Teenagers being told they can’t go to a funeral because they won’t understand or it’ll be too upsetting for them, for example, or being told that Great Grandma has gone to live on a farm. (Sounds flippant, genuinely isn’t.) Of course it’s a parent’s choice when and how to explain this stuff, but it does contextualise some of this death fear that we see sometimes.[/quote]
A daughter of a friend of mine said that when their dog died she told her little boy it had gone to live on a farm with grandad, who also had recently died. He was about 6 I think? Anyone or anything that died went to this mythical farm. Apparently her boy was very sensitive, but what's going to happen when he finds out?
My grandson is the same age and he's very prosaic about death. He told me once very seriously that you can't say the "d" word sometimes as some people don't like it, but everyone and everything dies and goes to heaven. That kid was raised right.