SHOULD CHILDREN UNDER 10 ATTEND FUNERALS?
My friends Marshall and Gloria had one son, after years of trying. Gloria, a genuine workaholic, left most of Little Marsh's playtime up to Marshall, who did all the things dads do with kids - at least, as many as he could manage. Marshall had been ill for years with one of those chronic diseases that wasn't actually supposed to take him out before he reached 40, but one muggy night it did.
Gloria called 911, but Marshall had gone to a place no one could shock him back from. Awakened by the hubbub, Marsh wandered into the bedroom just as the morgue staff was loading his father onto a gurney. "Go back to bed!" Gloria almost shrieked at the toddler. "Daddy's sleeping!"
Everyone but Gloria thought the child should go to Marshall's funeral; she wouldn't hear of it. Marsh stayed with my family until after the ceremonies, when the relatives returned to the house. Then he looked from face to face, wondering why his mother looked so sad, why his grandmother wouldn't stop crying, why people stroked his head and pinched his cheeks. And where was his dad? He walked from room to room, calling to him, but he didn't jump out of the closet and he didn't peek out from under the bed. His briefcase was still there by the front door, so he hadn't gone to work. His mother's response to his enquiry was to clasp him to her chest and burst into tears. He didn't ask again.
Marsh changed, from a bouncy little boy to a wide-eyed and anxious child who wouldn't let his mother out of his sight when she was at home and fretted for her when she was not. As an adult, he reflected on his belief that it would have been better for him to attend final rites for his father than to wonder, as he did for years, where his dad had gone and why nobody mentioned him anymore. He and his mother are not close.
There is something humans fear about death. Perhaps it is the not knowing, the fear of Divine retribution for past misdeeds, the permanence of the separation from loved ones. Particularly in a sudden and unanticipated death, the living may have difficulty processing what has happened, and to explain to a small child may seem just too much in the moment. Yet, children want to know. Kept in the dark, they create their own myths about what has befallen the missing person, and conjure up bugaboos far more fierce than the actual situation. Marsh slept fitfully for years. His dad had been sleeping, and people had come and dragged him out of bed and zipped him up in a big black plastic bag and he never came home again. Then why should Marsh ever want to go to sleep?
What, the parent of the young child must ask, is the purpose of a funeral? It is a 'goodbye' ritual, an opportunity for those remaining to take leave of the deceased. Depending on the ceremony and belief system, the family visits with the lost one, celebrates his/her life with pictures, songs, and testimonies, and then go to the decedent's final resting place, where they watch the lowering of the casket and may even participate in the burial.
Years ago, people lay in state in their own parlors, surrounded by family members and friends. That trend is returning. Recently a friend died after a protracted illness. He requested that his coffin rest in his home and that his funeral service should occur there. We were silent about his decisions until we saw how they worked. His young daughter and his brothers' children saw him resting there. They heard the stories, funny and serious, that people told about their experiences with him. His friends sang his favorite songs. They laughed and cried along with the adults and helped with making collages and arranging the funeral programs. They served the guests. They had goodbyes to say, too, and they said them. After the formal ceremony, when the funeral director came to prepare the body for burial, the children knew what was happening. They understood that they were not supposed to like it, but that it was time for their loved one to go.
They proceeded to the cemetery, where they saw that many other people had died before their relative; where they understood that someday everyone standing there would go back into the earth. They learned that death is a natural part of life. Yes, they cried. Yes, they went through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of denial, anger, bargaining and depression that every human goes through when there is a loss. But they got to the final phase, acceptance, much faster. None of them is wondering what became of Uncle or Dad. None of them wander through the house looking for him. There are no terrors in the night that taint their memories of the departed one and keep them from closing their eyes in sleep at night.