Saying Goodbye To Grandpa and Can you take an airplane to heaven?

June 11, 2009

Saying Goodbye To Grandpa and Can you take an airplane to heaven?

Last week my father suffered a stroke and passed away suddenly. At just 65 years old, he was mostly healthy, active, and had been happily married for 43 years. And such, my children, two out of his ten grandchildren had to receive a crash course in death and grieving.

Before I tore out of the house last Sunday evening to make the 7 hour drive to upstate New York - my kids hugged and clung onto me. I tried to choke back the tears as I explained that (at the time) Grandpa was very sick and in the hospital. I didn't have any details to know that really he was in critical condition and with a DNR it was just a matter of hours before the end came.

He passed away the next day.

In my sadness all I could think of was how would I explain it all to my children. How best could I talk to them about the passing of my father, their Grandpa. I worried about how they would handle seeing sadness.

I questioned having the kids attend but at the insistence of my family they were to be there. My mother, especially wanted the kids around. So, my husband loaded the car and trekked for 8 hours in a small car with 2 children - one of whom has autism.

I immediately reached out to several friends of kids with autism on how I should deal with the death of Grandpa to my 8 year old son. I thought he would be confused, disoriented, and I feared that he would 'ruin" the funeral by doing something inappropriate. Of my two children, I expected he would be the one to struggle the most with Grandpa's passing.

Of this assumption, I was wrong.

I wasn't prepared for my 4 year old daughter to ask such questions as: How can we say good-bye to Grandpa if he cannot talk back to us? Why is everyone carrying that big table? I tried to use simple terms and explain that Grandpa was in heaven now to which came an onslaught of further questions: Where is Heaven? If heaven is in the sky, can we take an airplane to heaven like we did to Disney World?

As the questions keep coming in and I reach to find "the right" answers, it is her innocent outlook that keeps me going during this very sad time. We will all miss Grandpa, my father.

New Jersey Moms Blog post by MaryTara. MT blogs her adventures in parenting two beautiful children on the Jersey Shore, life with autism & without it, the gluten & casein free diet, and vaccination choice issues at The Bon Bon Gazette and raising a child with amblyopia at Adventures in Amblyopia.