(And other hard conversations with kids)
In the history of difficult family conversations, there are two which have stood out, as much for being indelibly etched into my mind as for the hazy incomprehensibility which surrounded them: The day I told my kids their Dad had cancer, and the day I told them he had died.
Moments that change everything
Some conversations seem to break through the very fabric of reality, distorting everything. Some kind of strange, static interference, that makes the world difficult to comprehend. There’s a before – when no matter what, things were sort of ok, sort of normal, (whatever that is); and things, good, new things, were possible. And then there’s an after. An after where the world is cracked open and you feel like you’re falling right in.
It can feel particularly bitter as a parent, bringing devastating news to your children. You are exposing the very souls you love the most to the awfulness of this world. It’s a special and horrible kind of pain, I think.
Not making it all better
The day I told my children about the cancer diagnosis, one of them said to me: ‘What is the percentage chance he’ll get better. Because if it’s less than 10%, I don’t want to know’. (God I love a statistician.) And every part of my being was screaming silently: ‘say something reassuring, give them some hope’. For infinite milliseconds, I flirted with so many happier possible answers.
But I also knew, already, that the cancer was terminal. I knew every detail of the grading and staging, of how and where it had spread, that treatment was palliative. And so I decided, instead of making it all better, (and OH, I wanted so much to do that), that I would let them in on the secret that all of us adults know. That life is finite and often unpredictable and sometimes very cruel.
‘I’m so sorry my love, he’s not going to get better, they can’t do anything to treat his cancer.’ And we all cried, and we all hugged. And later we had fish and chips and I don’t know what else because I don’t remember much of that day, or in fact a lot of some of the others that followed.
I rather think that reality slipped away, that day. That it crawled silently under the carpet and out of the door, and would never quite appear the same again. When it did start to return, it hung in the air like a strange wispy mist; sometimes sinking into the rooms to stifle us and other times skitting away on an invisible breeze, impossible to grasp. It stayed that way for a long time.
Thinking about dying
There is something about the contemplation of death and dying that seems to trip us up, in the modern world we’ve made. Perhaps because so many older and dying people are far away from us, being cared for by professionals, and we no longer have that intimate experience of individuals and bodies nearer the end of their lives.
Our world is full instead of anti-aging creams, surgeries and routines to help us pretend we ae immortal. It feels a little ironic, in an age of information-exchange and such potential for connection and communication, that we are further away than ever from our impermanent reality. Or at least from bringing it to mind, into conversations, and into our worlds to contemplate openly.
Irving Yalom, existential psychotherapist, has a beautiful book, ‘Staring at the Sun’, in which he talks about the necessity of contemplating death in order to fully appreciate and live well our lives. Though we can’t look directly or indefinitely at it (at the sun, or at death) without becoming blinded and overwhelmed, if we never even glance at it we risk losing something beautiful and urgent in how we appreciate our relatively short time on earth.
But thinking, and talking, about death and dying with those we love, can be particularly painful.
Talking as support
If you read most literature on supporting children with a parent who has a terminal illness, you will find that it tells you that talking honesty and openly is really important. I hadn’t actually read any of this, when I spoke to my kids. But what I did have was an ill-defined but very definite deep, solid knowing inside of me. I knew in my bones that I needed to let them know what was going on, to tell them truthfully what was happening, and to make sure that our house was a place to ask anything they wanted.
I think what I DID know, from years of working across the lifespan, with people in emotional pain, people who had experienced traumatic events, was that without fail most people find having information, even difficult information, better than not knowing. And I was very lucky, in some ways, that I had years of experience of having very difficult conversations with people, about all sorts of painful and unpleasant things.
Why Honesty Matters
Not everyone in my social circle believed that I was doing the right thing, being so honest. I imagine that they, like me, had a fantasy about protecting the kids from the harshness of the real world. For me though, not telling them would mean what? Not letting them know until he actually died? Not allowing them the chance to say goodbyes? Not being honest with them? These all seemed like terrible choices to me at that time.
Children are super-tuned-in to the slightest bit of strangeness, anxiety, discord or change that occurs when difficult stuff is happening, whether you tell them anything or not. And whether you think they know or not. And knowing ‘something’s up‘ but not exactly what it is, can be particularly unsettling. Kids often ‘fill in the gaps’ with their own imaginings when they aren’t given information. And their imaginings can be far worse than reality, even when that reality is tough.
One of my children believed for a long while that their Dad had cancer because they’d been ‘naughty and bad’ – heartbreaking to hear, but it also showed me that however much I thought I’d explained things, I still had a lot more work to do.
I feel like talking honestly to children about illness and dying, though it can feel agonisingly difficult, is also a gift to them. It sets up a relationship of trust, and it gives them the message that they can come to you, and ask what they need – that you’ll be there for them. If, sometime later, they discover that you’ve not been truthful with them, it can be deeply unsettling. The realisation that you have not been honest can make it harder for them to seek out your support, and hinder their ability to navigate their grief.
And, sometimes, having information can help children to make different, and difficult, decisions about how they spend their time with their parent, and what else they want to know (or not know). Talking to them honestly means they have some autonomy, they have some choice within an experience which can otherwise seem frighteningly out of their control. They know where to go and who to turn to, if they want to know more, if they want to do a hospital visit, if they want help telling friends….
Of course, each parent, each child, each family, is different. You have to find your own way, navigate the best you can, parent in your own way.
Why cancer’s a bit like plasticine.
It’s a slightly sunny day and we’ve wheeled their Dad outside into the hospital garden to try and catch some sunshine. One of my children looks uncomfortable and sad, and walks off to stand under a tree. They point to the shiny silver-grey building next to the carpark and ask what it is.
‘Oh that’s the cancer research centre’
‘What do they do there?’
‘They have scientists and laboratories and they try to find out what causes cancer and how it spreads. And they try to find new treatments and cures for it.’
‘So why can’t they find a cure for Dad, and make him better?’
And inside, I kinda want to scream, because it’s a damn fine question with no answer that feels reasonable right now. But I think ‘How can I begin to make any sense of this?’ So I sit on the grass and I talk.
‘Well my love, sometimes cancer’s a bit like plasticine’.
And I say, ‘imagine Dad’s organs, like his heart and lungs, they’re like red plasticine. And the cancer is blue. And if the cancer is next to the organs, or just on the edge, like this…’ And I put my two hands next to each other, each balled into a fist.
‘And if the cancer is like this, then the surgeon might be able to do an operation and cut it out. Or the radiologist might be able to zap it with radiotherapy, like Amma had. But with Bab’s cancer, it’s different. The cancer is in the organs so it’s just like if you smooshed the plasticine up together like this.’ And I put my hands together, and interlock the fingers.
‘And so you can’t get the cancer out. The blue plasticine. Because it’s all attached to the red plasticine. The organs. It’s too mixed up inside them so you can’t get it out.’
And my child cried, and hugged me, and said it’s not fair. And I said no, it’s not. And that felt true, right then.
_________________
Books, stories and spaces for big questions
In the end, we can never have all the answers. We can only try our best to be open, as much as we know our children need us to be, and create spaces and relationships, either with us or with other trusted adults, where they feel safe enough to express all of how they feel and ask questions when they need to.
Not everyone finds it easy to have these difficult conversations – well, do any of us? One thing that can really help is having books around that tell different stories of loss, death and grief. That way, when our children feel sadness, confusion or have big questions, there are resources around for them to get a sense of not being alone in their grief. And for us, to give us frameworks and ideas of conversations to have and things that might come up.
Our family is a big family of storytellers, on both my side, and my children’s father’s. So one of the most important parts of our grief has been the remembering (and re-membering) that keeps him present in our lives. We haven’t made ‘memory books’, or used any of the tools that people sometimes recommend – each person and family has to find something that speaks to them and their connections with the people they grieve.
What we do have are lots of photos up around the house – but not framed ones that present a static, frozen ‘best image’ of their Dad – photos that are taken from albums and then stuck on doors and walls when one of us feels the pull. A changeable array, snippets of his life, that moves with our memories and our feelings, and which at times naturally clashes with each others’ memories and feelings, and has to be navigated together.
The photos are prompts for anecdotes and memories, for little bits of the past that we weave into now. In fact it is stories we have most of all – not always ‘happy’, but many that are funny, embarrassing, sad, evocative, dramatic and silly….and which tell him back into the world again, and into the belonging of our family.
