Children and loss

I remember the first funeral I ever attended.  My paternal grandmother passed away while I was in my early teens, and my brother and I were expected to go to the funeral.  While my brother and I were quite close to our grandmother when we were little, her progressive dementia and lengthy stay at a nursing home made for a distance in our relationship.  I remember the funeral like it was yesterday, because I was totally unprepared for it.  I had no idea what to expect, so there were a lot of things that just shocked me.  When I saw the casket, for example, I was petrified.  I couldn’t understand why my Nanny’s dead body was there in the room.  At the reception, I was caught completely off guard by all these people laughing and eating and chatting when I thought they should all be crying and grieving!

Marsha and I have chosen to give Alyssa the choice as to whether she wants to come to her Grand-Nanny’s funeral, and to prepare her for exactly what she’s going to see, and how she and other people will likely feel.  She says she wants to go, but this in entirely new ground for me as a parent, so I was wondering what other folks think.  What is your take on helping children deal with grief and loss?  Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the deceased did not know the Lord.  Please leave some comments, and thanks in advance.

No, not one.

When a man he serves the Lord, it makes his life worthwhile.
It don’t matter ’bout his position, it don’t matter ’bout his lifestyle.
Talk about perfection, I ain’t never seen none
And there ain’t no man righteous, no not one.

-Bob Dylan, Ain’t No Man Righteous (No Not One)

I’ve come to the realization that my health problems have more to do with stress than any medical condition, as it seems whenever things pile up on me, I get nailed with something. Two weeks ago, it was a horrible flu. This week, it was a series of migraines that somehow turned into a bout of strep throat (can’t figure that out at all), leaving me seriously behind in my schoolwork, such that I’m more than a little frightened. It’s possible that God is chastising me for being the procrastinator that I am, and I’m sure that’s a part of it. Moreover, perhaps he’s laying me low so that I am forced to depend on His help. It drives me nuts that I’m so obtuse, and require that kind of correction on a regular basis. You’d think that after being dragged kicking & screaming out of atheism into God’s presence, and pursuing fairly comprehensive theological studies on my own, at least I would be convinced of the necessity of depending wholly on God in all things.

As Paul and Bob point out, there’s no one righteous. No, not one. That includes yours truly. I can intellectually know a lot about God, and yet still completely miss the point – which I do with some degree of frequency. Whatchya gonna do, eh? You can either shrug your shoulders and keep walking the same road of sorrows, or you can throw yourself at the feet of the King and cry out for mercy and pardon. I’m pretty adept at the former, but healing only comes through the latter. Walking that rocky road has left my feet calloused and sore. I think I’ll spend some time on my knees, instead.