Can anyone advise me on not being... impatient with DS over this (CW, death)

[ReanimatedSGB]

My oldest friend moved abroad with his wife, 10 years ago, when DS was a toddler. I have kept in touch with the couple via email, social media etc though we have never had the money to go and visit them. DS has heard me talk about them from time to time so 'knows' who they are, etc (the wife of the couple was my birth partner and baby sat him a lot, so if anything he knows her better than her H).

My friend had cancer, and died yesterday. DS is quite a lot more upset than I would have expected. I am being nice and comforting him but a bit of me is thinking, come on, you are over-reacting, you can't really remember him that well.It's not a case of this being DS' first encounter with death, either: both his grandfathers have died and several of my friends, including one he knew quite well.

(As to having lost a lot of friends and relatives, It's not a matter of me being hugely unlucky - I am in my 50s so the longer you go on, the more people you lose; both DS Dad and I were older parents and our parents were older parents...)

Any tips on comforting DS without being too 'Pull yourself together' about it?

I wouldn’t overindulge him. We’ve a tendency to allow children to dwell on sadness now and sentimentality is very different from the grief of losing someone close.

That almost sounds like you want a return to the 'stiff upper lip' days when we encouraged children to ignore and hide their feelings. I'd far rather 'overindulge' children's emotions than give them some pathetic message about bucking up and not being 'sentimental'

OP, it's probably not the grief of this person's death that's hit him so hard, but the realisation that this can and does happen to anyone, and if it happens to his parent's closest friend it will happen one day to his parent. It doesn't really matter that this isn't his first experience of loss or death, either. By the time my grampa died I was very very used to the phone calls to say someone had passed away- but his was the first death that really brought it all home to me. Emotions are complex. There's no set of rules that they follow.

My mum is ferociously republican and her rants whenever there was any sort of royal event in my childhood had to be heard to be believed. When Diana PoW died, my mum sat in front of her funeral and sobbed. Was she grieving for Diana? Was she hell. But that death had set off something inside her and her emotions were real and as valid as anyone else's. The mind is a funny thing.

@ladybee: my friend died yesterday but we have known for a couple of weeks that it was imminent. I think several PP have a point about hormones and projection. He is in school today but I will see how he is doing this evening (we do have a couple of day trips coming up which should cheer him up a bit.)

The mum of a classmate of my 13 year old died recently. It was expected. My daughter came home from school, told me and broke her heart about it for the weekend. Lots of tears and cuddles and lights being left on at night. We didn't know the mum at all and whilst my dd is friendly with the other girl, it would really just be on chit chat terms. Unfortunately like yourselves it's not ours or my kids first experience of death - we've had relatives - both distant and very close die in recent years. The kids have been to wakes, funerals, we're all very open with grief etc. But this news it just floored her.

I don't know if she realised that I wouldn't be there always and maybe not as long as she thought or whether it was the thought of a kid exactly the same age no longer having her mum there for Christmas, birthdays, school stuff, normal boring stuff like watching tv, arguing etc. I just let her do what she wanted, she wanted to be around me and her dad a bit more, she was less eyerollery at her younger sisters. It just took her the few days of the weekend to think it through. She is an empathetic enough child but I was quite surprised by her reaction.

He’s probably just had a sudden realisation of mortality; his mum’s friend (presumably of a similar age?) has died so he’s probably had the gut-wrenching thought that one day it will be you. In your 50s, you’re likely a bit older than his peers’ parents, who probably don’t look to him like they’re going anywhere yet.

He can’t be any older than 12/13 by the info you give in your post so be gentle with him, it’s the first time a younger person he knows has died.

Elderly grandparents’ deaths might not have affected him so much as he has been conditioned to know that elderly people die, and perhaps hadn’t ever thought about younger people dying, if that makes sense?

Use it as an opportunity for him to make a nice card for your late friend’s family and talk to him about his feelings. Puberty is rough!

for you both, so sorry at the loss of your dear friend.