THE PEDAGOGICAL PATH – How do you talk about death? Children perceive, ask, want to know and do so with greater insistence when they perceive that a certain topic puts us in difficulty and we don’t know how to deal with it.
Talking about death means talking about the mystery of Life, talking about death means not being able to explain with the mind, it means contemplating without rationalizing, it means surrendering to something that transcends us. Talking about death means being put against the wall by children because they will inevitably ask about our death: “And when will you die? If I grow up, then you die and then I don’t want to grow up. But where do you go when you die? ” . This means dealing with our fear, with our vision of life, with our spiritual dimension.
Children need the truth, they need to be able to talk about this aspect and they will ask us in the most unexpected moments, when we are not ready, it will be like this, like a door in the face: “Sbam!”. So we need to reflect on it, keep the question open within us, pause.
We can no longer put our heads in the sand, sweeten the pill by telling ourselves that children will have time to understand that life is also suffering, filter fairy tales by removing the antagonists because children are impressed, because we have to tell ourselves: we are the ones who don’t know how to manage their possible dismay, we are the ones who tremble inside when the evil witch arrives or the wolf appears, we are the ones who are afraid of their fear. Children turn to us, to those “good enough” adults as Winnicott said, because first of all they want to be welcomed, they want to be accompanied, contained, they want to deposit their emotions, they want emotional containment as the background and premise of any response, on topics for which there is no right answer.
The mystery is contemplated, not explained, and man has always resorted to myths, religions and rituals to accompany himself in experiencing death. Children need this, analogue language, to be told that there are invisible threads that unite us beyond the concrete and tangible dimension of this life. They need to be accompanied to feel the dimension of presence through memory, they need to be told the story of their ancestors through small daily gestures “This is the cake that grandmother used to make, grandfather always said that…”, to feel like heirs of rites and ways of being that build their identity and make them proud of being bearers of something precious.
Children need to know that the opposite of death is not Life but birth, and that Life contains both. Like the seed dies to give life to a plant, like the tree loses all its leaves cyclically, but continues to exist. Like us, who met again here but who had already met before and we were all together in the land of the Future and when the magician of Time called us we took our little bag of quality and came to experiment in this world to learn what we were destined to learn and then say goodbye again and go to the land of Memory. There go the people who leave us and whose presence remains alive in us as a concrete feeling of pure and clear love.
It’s just a hypothesis, there could be many others, what matters is that children need to be able to nourish their being through the feeling of unity of Life, here’s the responsibility to cultivate it in us. Otherwise, as young as they are, they would experience the tear, the laceration, the emptiness, the anguish without being equipped with the meta-cognitive ability to elaborate autonomously. They need to be able to express themselves and to experience that it is possible to narrate oneself but above all to be welcomed, by aware adults.
Our little ones need us to help them process, even having them participate in funerals, as a rite of passage or as a farewell celebration, as a moment of profound thanks to a person we say goodbye to. And if we fear that it is a trauma for them or we think we are causing them suffering, let’s try to think how we would feel if someone prevented us from taking part in the farewell of a loved one, denied us with a lie the possibility of saying our goodbyes, denying us the possibility of process grief. This is now happening to many families affected by the drama of Covid-19 and this is a tear, a trauma, a pain that adds to the pain.
Children need to know that they will not be kept in the dark about important things, and this certainty will save them from incessant anxiety. If we are sincere and honest with them, they will know that they can count on trustworthy people, and at least the pain of the loss will be supported and compensated by the certainty of relationships that can give them security, loyalty and sharing. Thus, looking at a starry sky they will be able to feel, in their hearts, that they are not alone, because Love survives death.
Doctor Laura Mazzarelli is a pedagogical consultant and teacher at nursery school. Pedagogical trainer. Follow her on www.ilcamminopedagogico.it
