the hardest part of dying
This part Sucks!
How do you tell your minor children that a parent is dying?
This question was one that I looked up online right after I looked up pancreatic cancer and knew that my husband's life would be cut short. Honestly, I never found any good answers, if I even found an answer. The hard part of it is there is no one answer. Each age group, each child, each gender and each child's relationship with the terminal parent and the living parent can factor into what goes into your decision as the parent to tell your child that one of their parent's is going to die. Below is how and what we told our children.
As it worked out, we told our children individually. Looking in the rearview mirror, my husband and I agreed months later that this was in fact, the right way to go. As important as I believe that it is for the kids to get essentially the same information, sometimes, things need to be tailored individually.
We started by telling all of the boys that their father had cancer, however, we had not disclosed to the kids what type of cancer. Reason being, we didn't want them to go looking it up and potentially becoming misinformed. We also made the decision to tell our children before we told other family. At the time Covid was still a major issue in hospitals which meant that none of our children could visit their father in the hospital due to their age and also the hospitals restricted patients to only one visitor at a time. (At least I could be with my husband while he was in the hospital. ) Rather than do it over the phone, we have an Alexa show in our kitchen and this way we could see our kids and their reaction. We were honest, "The reason that Dad turned yellow was due to a tumor that was pushing on and blocking his bile duct. This means that Dad has cancer. We don't know much more than that right now. Dad will have an appointment with a specialist in the next week and we will find out more then. We wanted you all to know right now before P2 leaves for camp tomorrow."
What Eric and I wanted to do and felt that we accomplished at this point was simply to keep our children in the loop, to keep things absolutely factual, but not give them so much information that they could go down the rabbit whole on the internet searching and find who knows what. Cancer is a broad subject and if we got too specific, who knows what that could have meant. We also promised to keep the kids updated once we knew more. Sure we knew that this was going to be a shit show.
Once we had the the grim prognosis. If Eric didn't seek treatment the Doctor was giving him maybe 6 months. With treatment the doctor suggested 9-12 months. My husband lived almost 9 months.
Telling the 12 year old
Telling the 17 year old
Telling the 15 year old
How much do you tell them and when?
How do you live for your children?
How do you die?
Talking with your children about funerals.