How do children deal with (great)grandparents passing away?

[molosolo]

Sorry for the morbid topic, I do feel awful about posting this.

My husbands grandmother isn't in good health at the moment, she isn't at the end of her life yet, but has been progressively getting sicker, less mobile and forgetful. I went to visit today and I haven't seen her for 2 months and I was really shocked at how different she seemed, she is 87.

It got me thinking about how my DS who is 9 years old will cope when she passes, I don't have any experience, I never met any of my grandparents, they all passed before I was born.

He was/is very close to his great grandma, she did 70% of the childcare before he went to school and MIL has DS sleep over every other weekend (this is changing to once a month as he gets older and more into his Xbox/meeting up with friends) and he goes to see his great grandma then, they're really close, a few years ago he had to do a poster of someone he loved for school and he chose his great grandma.

I am not sure how he would cope, I was wondering if there are any resources I could look into now to prepare myself to support him?

I feel awful thinking about this when she isn't even that ill but my DS is a very sensitive, emotional child and I just can't stop thinking about how he will react when something happens.

There's a lovely book that I was introduced to as a child when an elderly relative died: it's called badger's parting gift, and I remember it really helping me to process the loss. It's probably a bit young for your DS, but hopefully someone will be along soon with an age appropriate suggestion. Sometimes reading a gentle fiction book about a difficult topic can really help to process a real life situation. The other things to be are aware of are the behaviours you display (it's ok to cry in front of him, but also trying to do some normal stuff) and not talking about it constantly, but creating a space where he can voice thoughts and fears and ask questions. Answer him honestly in an age appropriate way.

I hope this is useful.

Winston’s Wish and Daisy’s Dream are both charities that deal with child bereavement.

The important thing is to be honest and direct - so no “passed away”, or “went to sleep” but make it very clear that the person has died and isn’t coming back. Sounds harsh but children can be very confused by the coy language we use.

Let him lead with questions and keep language honest but age appropriate. You’ll be surprised how resilient most children are in the end x

You can slowly prepare them for what is to come, just keep it age appropriate.
Mine 3 just lost their last great grandparent, the youngest being 14, we had conversations weeks before she actually passed, we are a 12 hour drive away or a one hour flight. They didn't see her very often to see the slow decline.

We lost DMiL when DS was 6, and then recently DM when he was 10.

He handled both better than I thought he would. With DMiL maybe he was a bit young to understand fully, but even with DM who he spent a lot of time with it didn't affect him as much as I thought it might. Maybe the thought of him never having that time with his grandma again probably hit me harder than it did him.

He has said some beautiful things, a couple of times it's all I've been able to do to keep it together. A couple of nights after DM passed he was going to bed and we were having a chat. He comes out with "Grandma believed in the afterlife didn't she? Well wherever she is I hope she's happy."

I was in bits, it was just so pure the way he said it. The he said goodnight, put his head on the pillow and went to sleep. Didn't even think twice about it.

I think for him it's come out in other ways. He had a couple of spells where he'd become easily frustrated and upset about unrelated things. Like at his football training when his coach gave a bit of constructive criticism to the team. He took it as being directed at him and got upset about it. Sometimes he would get a bit cheeky with the backchat and his attitude when he'd rarely been like that before.

I don't think he can join the dots and see where it's coming from but we know we just need to be patient with him when it happens and make sure he knows he can talk about anything he wants to try and prevent it happening.

My kids were 5&9 when my dad died and then a year older when father in law died.

They actually coped fine. As someone else said though I was very honest and didn't use cliches or niceties if that's the right word.

We talk about them still and also, black humour is ok if it helps. Like I still had 'mum and dad' listed in my phone & my son said 'oooh imagine if grandad answered and he was dead and a ghost' . It's all processing for them.

They came to the bit after the funeral but not the service and we kept their lives as normal as possible otherwise

I will say tho that we didn't see them every day / week so I'd imagine that might be a bit trickier but alot of the advice still stands.