In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living

Chapter Eleven: Children Curiosity underscores every stage of life. Without it we would be a pretty dull bunch. Yet when it comes to death and grief, even the most curious among us clam up. Carl Jung believed that "the negation of life's fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Not wanting to die," he wrote, "is identical with not wanting to live." In The Healing Heart, Norman Cousins concludes that "death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is." How can the rest of us become more accepting of their wise conclusions? Perhaps, quite simply, by listening to our children. Recently, I met a woman whose husband had died several years ago, just days after his fortieth birthday. Betsy said she and her husband had been "soul mates" from the moment they met until his death ten years later. They could communicate almost, she said, "without talking." And so it did not seem at all strange for her, as he lay dying of a brain tumor in the bedroom of their home, to curl up beside him "in spoon position," as was their habit, and ask him to give her a sign. "You mean after I am dead?" he asked, his voice, a whisper. "Yes," she said, "so I know that you're safe." "But what if I can't? What if I'm not able to?" "You'll be able to," she said. "I just have to believe you will." He died a week later. After his body had been taken away, Betsy's two-year-old son came into their bedroom with her father, who was quite close to the little boy. This was a child who, Betsy said, "was an observer, a child who, save a word here and there, barely talked at all." Suddenly, Betsy remembered, her son "stretched his arms up toward the section of the ceiling over the bed, and said, 'Daddy, Daddy, hold me, hold me.' It was incredible. He had never, ever put words together like that before or spoken so clearly. My father, a no-nonsense surgeon, was speechless. It was obvious to both of us that my husband was present in some form and my son could see him, even if we couldn't." Betsy described waking up in the middle of the night two weeks later and feeling "absolutely" that her husband was there, first as a "kind of energy" surging through the the room, and then in a calmer form, tucked in beside her in the very configuration they had always slept in. "He was there by my side for -- I'm not sure how long, really -- but I experienced an amazing sense of peace and well-being. It was the sign I had hoped for." Betsy has told very few people about these experiences; like the bank teller, she fears they might think she is crazy, a refrain that I have heard too many times to count. Yet I believe if we grant ourselves a grace period to observe and to listen, we might learn a few things, one being that at our most basic, we too are sensate creatures. Small children remind us of this every day. They help us to strip away the pretense, to see and respond in a more open way, as Betsy's son did, without a smidgen of self-consciousness. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has said that dying children often express their feelings more naturally than adults. Terminally ill children often speak of their dreams and visions, according to pediatric oncologist Diane Komp, the author of A Child Shall Lead Them and A Window to Heaven. She writes, "For adults, the so called 'near-death experience' is often spiritually revolutionary, a type of conversion experience that puts them on a new road. For children, however, the experience is more spiritually evolutionary, progress on an already familiar pathway." My friend Cathy, a teacher and a painter, is one of those rare grown-ups who both understands and speaks theCobb, Nancy is the author of 'In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living' with ISBN 9780375403415 and ISBN 0375403418.