My first experience with death as a child happened when I was eleven years old. My grandfather passed away in his sleep from heart failure. I had spent that night at a girlfriends, when I came home I asked my father where my mother was. He replied simply that my grandfather had passed and she was with my grandmother. It was not discussed any further and I went to my room where I awaited my mothers return. My mother proceeded to explain what happened. I was more concerned with her well being than the death itself. At the time I knew what death was. I had a fascination with death as a child, it was something that greatly interested me. My grandfather had a very traditional funeral. I was very timid and curious at the viewing. I felt uncomfortable
Death’s whisper traveled in my ear, wrapping around my mind, “I can take you away from this madness. Beyond this hell, that is life.” “Will it be more peaceful there?” I asked. “As serene as heaven above.” Possessive Depression responded. My heavy heart fluttered at the thought of serenity. No more painful days, or lonely, restless nights. No more of this living death. Anxiety murmured all my insecurities tempting me to make the decision, as every tick-tock from the clock he held, echoed in my brain, putting fear in me of things that will never happen. I thought about the invitation to eternal sleep, “I would finally be able to extract this smiling mask…” Thus, I decided to join the dance of death, done dealing with my dilemmas.
How Children Deal with Death Death is hard to deal with for everyone, but for children especially; they view death in various ways at different ages. At these ages children need help and guidance from their parents. The first step is to help them feel a part of the whole experience, doing this will allow them to deal with the death.
I figured someone had passed away, but I didn't think much of it. My father spoke to me in a very calm and soft voice with tears in his eyes. In between his words you could hear the hurt. He told me that my godmother had passed away. I sat there not knowing what to say, but could feel the hurt overwhelm me.
This is crazy. Why am I afraid? I’m acting as if this is my first funeral. Funerals have become a given, especially with a life like mine, the deaths of my father, my uncle and not my biological mother, you would think I could be somewhat used to them by now. Now I know what you’re thinking, death is all a part of life. But the amount of death that I’ve experienced in my life would make anyone cower away from the thought. This funeral is nothing compared to those unhappy events.
Death anxiety occurs across all ages. Children first acknowledge death in preschool period (Slaughter & Griffiths, 2007). It is also mentioned by Slaughter and Griffiths (2007) that young children endorse more fear in comparison to older children. death anxiety is negatively correlated with death understanding for children (Slaughter & Griffiths, 2007). As adolescents expose to death more, their personal death anxiety decreases (Ens & Bond, 2007). It is also
As cited by Riely (2003) “No one, neither adult nor child, grieves in the same manner” (p. 213). Parents usually do not tell the whole story of a death to children. “Children are “are not allowed to talk about who, what, when, where, and why a death has occurred” (Riely, 2003, p. 213). Not sure about what is going on, children try to piece together the bits of information they get and sense. Eventually, children “regard the death as a frightening, mysterious, traumatic experience with untrustworthy parent or adult caregivers who offer them no way to cope” (Riely, 2003, p. 213). Death often “elicits shock, denial, great anxiety, and distress” (Riely, 2003, p. 213). Thus, as children are not given permission to be sad and to grieve, “they fantasize and idealize the relationship with the dead. Children try to act grown-up in an attempt to master the pain of their loss and will deny helplessness. They tend to exhibit fearful, phobic behaviors and hypochondrias” (Riely, 2003, p.
My first experience with death occurred when I was around the age of 6. My grandfather on my dad’s side had been diagnosed with lung cancer. I did not know him, he was in India and I had only seen him through pictures my mom had shown me. At that time, I felt nothing, how could I be upset over someone I barely knew? I remember my parents sitting at the table talking about his deteriorating condition. My dad decided to visit India for a month to be with him during his last days. I felt angry, very angry. My dad would be leaving me for a whole month because of that old guy? I mean he brought the lung cancer upon himself maybe he shouldn’t have smoked cigarettes right?
The summer of 2013 was a summer that would be locked in my memory storage for quite some time. Jordi was a friend of mine for five years. He left Belmond in 6th grade to go to Britt. After 8th grade he came back during the summer. Jordi and I hung out almost every day of that summer. We had a lot of fun and scary memories, here’s one of them.
My father passed away in 1991, two weeks before Christmas. I was 25 at the time but until then I had not grown up. I was still an ignorant youth that only cared about finding the next party. My role model was now gone, forcing me to reevaluate the direction my life was heading. I needed to reexamine some of the lessons he taught me through the years.
Looking back now I realize that there were many struggles in my years but from those struggles it has made me realize not to take things for granted and to cherish everything you have. The hardest struggle that I had to face was the lose of my grandpa. The month before school started was when everything seemed to be falling apart. August of 2014 was the most difficult month of my family’s life. My grandpa had been in the hospital for a couple days and we never expected that those were going to be our last days with him.During the period of time that he was in the hospital I was not able to be there with him because he lived in Illinois and i was in Wisconsin attending cheerleading practices and other school events. When I got the call my heart
I am the third child out of four in my family, I have one older sister, an older brother and then a younger brother. I was born on January 20th 1997 in Clinton, Ontario. This means I was probably conceived the middle of May sometime. My mother did not take pre-natal pills before I was born because I was not really expected, but she was taking vitamins during this time to stay healthy. My mother did see our family physician while she was pregnant with me. She saw the doctor every month for the first and second trimester and then she saw him every other week in the last trimester. In these checkups they would see if I was gaining weight, check blood pressure, blood levels and just to see if everything was healthy. My mom did not have any screening tests done to see if there was anything wrong because it was not very common to get screening done in our
In my life time, I have experienced many deaths. I have never had anyone that was very close to me die, but I have shed tears over many deaths that I knew traumatically impacted the people that I love. The first death that influenced me was the death of my grandfather. My grandfather passed away when I was very young, so I never really got the chance to know him. My papaw Tom was my mothers dad, and she was very upset after his passing. Seeing my mom get upset caused me to be sad. The second death that influenced my life was the death of my great grandmother. My great grandmother was a very healthy women her whole life. When she was ninety three she had
When I think back to my childhood I don’t have compelling memories of death. I remember a classmate’s parents passed away and the whole school attended the funeral. I am from Ireland this was an obligatory act to show consolidation with the family. All schools and state are intertwined and religion is a forced act, I suppose. I wasn’t
What made the death of my mother a stressor for me was that besides the fact that I lost my mother, her passing was so sudden; she was alive when I went to bed that night and then she was not when I woke up the next morning. She had been unwell for a really long time, but none of us had ever thought that it was bad enough to take her life. Her death affected every aspect of my life and my family’s life; it forever changed my relationship with my father and it will continue to affect how my family operates for the rest of our lives. If she had not died, then my father would not have remarried and I would not have gotten a stepmother; that is just another aspect that was permanently altered by one event. On top of that, she passed away at home
According to a 2001 Gallup poll, “more than 40% of Americans fear public speaking than death”, I was shocked to learn this statistics that I was not the only one. As I was pondering about what to write on my essay for my favorite school, I thought about my own childhood experience.